journal.pone.0068928.PDF (2.78 MB)
Human decision making based on variations in internal noise: an EEG study
journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-09, 19:21 authored by Sygal Amitay, Jeanne Guiraud, Ediz SohogluEdiz Sohoglu, Oliver Zobay, Barrie A Edmonds, Yu-Xuan Zhang, David R MoorePerceptual decision making is prone to errors, especially near threshold. Physiological, behavioural and modeling studies suggest this is due to the intrinsic or ‘internal’ noise in neural systems, which derives from a mixture of bottom-up and top-down sources. We show here that internal noise can form the basis of perceptual decision making when the external signal lacks the required information for the decision. We recorded electroencephalographic (EEG) activity in listeners attempting to discriminate between identical tones. Since the acoustic signal was constant, bottom-up and top-down influences were under experimental control. We found that early cortical responses to the identical stimuli varied in global field power and topography according to the perceptual decision made, and activity preceding stimulus presentation could predict both later activity and behavioural decision. Our results suggest that activity variations induced by internal noise of both sensory and cognitive origin are sufficient to drive discrimination judgments.
History
Publication status
- Published
File Version
- Published version
Journal
PLoS ONEISSN
1932-6203Publisher
Public Library of ScienceExternal DOI
Issue
7Volume
8Article number
e68928Department affiliated with
- Psychology Publications
Full text available
- Yes
Peer reviewed?
- Yes