A new perceptual bias reveals suboptimal population decoding of sensory responses.
Several studies have reported optimal population decoding of sensory responses in two-alternative visual discrimination tasks. Such decoding involves integrating noisy neural responses into a more reliable representation of the likelihood that the stimuli under consideration evoked the observed resp...
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
2012-01-01
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| Series: | PLoS Computational Biology |
| Online Access: | http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC3325184?pdf=render |
| _version_ | 1818419999321096192 |
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| author | Tom Putzeys Matthias Bethge Felix Wichmann Johan Wagemans Robbe Goris |
| author_facet | Tom Putzeys Matthias Bethge Felix Wichmann Johan Wagemans Robbe Goris |
| author_sort | Tom Putzeys |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Several studies have reported optimal population decoding of sensory responses in two-alternative visual discrimination tasks. Such decoding involves integrating noisy neural responses into a more reliable representation of the likelihood that the stimuli under consideration evoked the observed responses. Importantly, an ideal observer must be able to evaluate likelihood with high precision and only consider the likelihood of the two relevant stimuli involved in the discrimination task. We report a new perceptual bias suggesting that observers read out the likelihood representation with remarkably low precision when discriminating grating spatial frequencies. Using spectrally filtered noise, we induced an asymmetry in the likelihood function of spatial frequency. This manipulation mainly affects the likelihood of spatial frequencies that are irrelevant to the task at hand. Nevertheless, we find a significant shift in perceived grating frequency, indicating that observers evaluate likelihoods of a broad range of irrelevant frequencies and discard prior knowledge of stimulus alternatives when performing two-alternative discrimination. |
| first_indexed | 2024-12-14T12:47:29Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-55aa107ff7cf4182a727ac2777e15f25 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1553-734X 1553-7358 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-12-14T12:47:29Z |
| publishDate | 2012-01-01 |
| publisher | Public Library of Science (PLoS) |
| record_format | Article |
| series | PLoS Computational Biology |
| spelling | doaj.art-55aa107ff7cf4182a727ac2777e15f252022-12-21T23:00:44ZengPublic Library of Science (PLoS)PLoS Computational Biology1553-734X1553-73582012-01-0184e100245310.1371/journal.pcbi.1002453A new perceptual bias reveals suboptimal population decoding of sensory responses.Tom PutzeysMatthias BethgeFelix WichmannJohan WagemansRobbe GorisSeveral studies have reported optimal population decoding of sensory responses in two-alternative visual discrimination tasks. Such decoding involves integrating noisy neural responses into a more reliable representation of the likelihood that the stimuli under consideration evoked the observed responses. Importantly, an ideal observer must be able to evaluate likelihood with high precision and only consider the likelihood of the two relevant stimuli involved in the discrimination task. We report a new perceptual bias suggesting that observers read out the likelihood representation with remarkably low precision when discriminating grating spatial frequencies. Using spectrally filtered noise, we induced an asymmetry in the likelihood function of spatial frequency. This manipulation mainly affects the likelihood of spatial frequencies that are irrelevant to the task at hand. Nevertheless, we find a significant shift in perceived grating frequency, indicating that observers evaluate likelihoods of a broad range of irrelevant frequencies and discard prior knowledge of stimulus alternatives when performing two-alternative discrimination.http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC3325184?pdf=render |
| spellingShingle | Tom Putzeys Matthias Bethge Felix Wichmann Johan Wagemans Robbe Goris A new perceptual bias reveals suboptimal population decoding of sensory responses. PLoS Computational Biology |
| title | A new perceptual bias reveals suboptimal population decoding of sensory responses. |
| title_full | A new perceptual bias reveals suboptimal population decoding of sensory responses. |
| title_fullStr | A new perceptual bias reveals suboptimal population decoding of sensory responses. |
| title_full_unstemmed | A new perceptual bias reveals suboptimal population decoding of sensory responses. |
| title_short | A new perceptual bias reveals suboptimal population decoding of sensory responses. |
| title_sort | new perceptual bias reveals suboptimal population decoding of sensory responses |
| url | http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC3325184?pdf=render |
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