ArticleeLife2024
Direct observation of the neural computations underlying a single decision.
Article in eLife, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 41 papers.
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Who cites it
41 citing papers in PubMed.
- Selective enhancement of cost sensitivity by methylphenidate in adult ADHD: a randomized placebo-controlled trial.Psychological medicine · 2026Trial
- Control of water excretion in Hydra vulgaris by neural integration.Current biology : CB · 2026Article
- Behavioral demands organize a decision process into distinct yet coordinated neural representations in parietal cortex.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
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- Quantifying uncertainty in drift diffusion models of decision making under temporal dependence and parameter variability.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Article
- Macaque Area LIP Reflects Confidence-Dependent Changes in Decision Policy.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Integration of Memory and Sensory Information in Skilled Sequence Production.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2026Article
- Developmental and genetic modulation of evidence integration dynamics in zebrafish sensorimotor decision-making.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- How distributed is the brain-wide network that is recruited for cognition?Nature reviews. Neuroscience · 2026Review
- Cortex-wide Dynamics of Internal Decisions About Behavioral Context.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Behavioral Signatures of Post-Decisional Attention in Preferential Choice.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Neural basis of concurrent deliberation toward a choice and confidence judgment.Nature neuroscience · 2026Article
- Article
- Neural mechanisms of flexible perceptual inference.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- Neural dynamics outside task-coding dimensions drive decision trajectories through transient amplification.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- No Central Executive? Decision Formation Through Multi-Area Population Dynamics.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Review
- Brain-wide coordination of internal signals during decision-making.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Article
- A doubly stochastic renewal framework for partitioning spiking variability.Nature communications · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Neurobiological investigations of perceptual decision-making have furnished the first glimpse of a flexible cognitive process at the level of single neurons. Neurons in the parietal and prefrontal cortex are thought to represent the accumulation of noisy evidence, acquired over time, leading to a decision. Neural recordings averaged over many decisions have provided support for the deterministic rise in activity to a termination bound. Critically, it is the unobserved stochastic component that is thought to confer variability in both choice and decision time. Here, we elucidate this drift-diffusion signal on individual decisions. We recorded simultaneously from hundreds of neurons in the lateral intraparietal cortex of monkeys while they made decisions about the direction of random dot motion. We show that a single scalar quantity, derived from the weighted sum of the population activity, represents a combination of deterministic drift and stochastic diffusion. Moreover, we provide direct support for the hypothesis that this drift-diffusion signal approximates the quantity responsible for the variability in choice and reaction times. The population-derived signals rely on a small subset of neurons with response fields that overlap the choice targets. These neurons represent the integral of noisy evidence. Another subset of direction-selective neurons with response fields that overlap the motion stimulus appear to represent the integrand. This parsimonious architecture would escape detection by state-space analyses, absent a clear hypothesis.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.