{"id":2150,"date":"2019-12-29T00:09:52","date_gmt":"2019-12-28T14:09:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cognav.net\/?p=2150"},"modified":"2019-12-29T00:09:52","modified_gmt":"2019-12-28T14:09:52","slug":"whats-the-neural-basis-of-probabilistic-computation-in-visual-cortex","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/braininspirednavigation.com\/?p=2150","title":{"rendered":"What&#8217;s the neural basis of probabilistic computation in visual cortex?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Walker, Edgar Y., R. James Cotton, Wei Ji Ma, and Andreas S. Tolias. &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41593-019-0554-5\"><strong>A neural basis of probabilistic computation in visual cortex<\/strong><\/a>.&#8221; Nature Neuroscience 23, no. 1 (2020): 122-129.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Abstract<br \/>\n&#8220;<strong><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">Bayesian models of behavior suggest that organisms represent uncertainty associated with sensory variables<\/span><\/strong>. However, <span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><strong>the neural code of uncertainty remains elusive<\/strong><\/span>. A central hypothesis is that <span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><strong>uncertainty is encoded in the population activity of cortical neurons in the form of likelihood functions<\/strong><\/span>. We tested this hypothesis by simultaneously recording population activity from primate visual cortex during a visual categorization task in which trial-to-trial uncertainty about stimulus orientation was relevant for the decision. We decoded the likelihood function from the trial-to-trial population activity and found that it predicted decisions better than a point estimate of orientation. This remained true when we conditioned on the true orientation, suggesting that internal fluctuations in neural activity drive behaviorally meaningful variations in the likelihood function. <strong><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">Our results establish the role of population-encoded likelihood functions in mediating behavior and provide a neural underpinning for Bayesian models of perception<\/span><\/strong>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Walker, Edgar Y., R. James Cotton, Wei Ji Ma, and Andreas S. Tolias. &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41593-019-0554-5\"><strong>A neural basis of probabilistic computation in visual cortex<\/strong><\/a>.&#8221; Nature Neuroscience 23, no. 1 (2020): 122-129.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Walker, Edgar Y., R. James Cotton, Wei Ji Ma, and Andreas S. Tolias. &#8220;A neural basis of probabilistic computation in visual cortex.&#8221; Nature Neuroscience 23, no. 1 (2020): 122-129. Abstract &#8220;Bayesian models of behavior suggest that organisms represent uncertainty associated with sensory variables. However, the neural code of uncertainty remains elusive. A central hypothesis is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[479,96,179],"tags":[654,655,653,652],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/braininspirednavigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2150"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/braininspirednavigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/braininspirednavigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/braininspirednavigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/braininspirednavigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2150"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/braininspirednavigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2151,"href":"https:\/\/braininspirednavigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2150\/revisions\/2151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/braininspirednavigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/braininspirednavigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/braininspirednavigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}