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The Journal of Neuroscience, July 25, 2007, 27(30):8122-8137; doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1940-07.2007

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Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive
Linking Neuronal and Behavioral Performance in a Reaction-Time Visual Detection Task

Chris Palmer, Shao-Ying Cheng, and Eyal Seidemann

Department of Psychology and Center for Perceptual Systems, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78712

Correspondence should be addressed to Dr. Eyal Seidemann, Department of Psychology and Center for Perceptual Systems, The University of Texas at Austin, 108 East Dean Keeton, 1 University Station A8000, Austin, TX 78712-0187. Email: eyal{at}mail.cps.utexas.edu

Perceptual decisions are likely to be based on signals that are provided by populations of neurons in early sensory cortical areas. How these neural responses are combined across neurons and over time to mediate behavior is unknown. To study the link between neural responses and perceptual decisions, we recorded the activity of single units (SU) and multiple units (MU) in the primary visual cortex (V1) of monkeys while they performed a reaction-time visual detection task. We then determined how well the target could be detected from these neural signals. We found that, on average, the detection sensitivities supported by SU and MU in V1 are comparable with the detection sensitivity of the monkey even when considering neural responses during brief temporal intervals (median duration, 137 ms) that ended shortly before the monkey's reaction time. However, we observed systematic differences between the overall shape of the neurometric functions and the monkey's psychometric functions. We also examined the quantitative relationship between SU and MU activity and found that MU responses are consistent with the sum of the responses of multiple SU, most of which have low stimulus selectivity. Finally, we found weak but significant trial-to-trial covariations between V1 activity and behavioral choices, demonstrating for the first time that choice probability can be observed at the earliest stages of cortical sensory processing. Together, these results suggest that the activity of a large population of V1 neurons is combined suboptimally by subsequent processing stages to mediate behavioral performance in visual detection tasks.

Key words: visual cortex; visual detection; neurometric function; choice probability; population coding; electrophysiology

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Received Dec. 20, 2006; revised June 6, 2007; accepted June 20, 2007.

Correspondence should be addressed to Dr. Eyal Seidemann, Department of Psychology and Center for Perceptual Systems, The University of Texas at Austin, 108 East Dean Keeton, 1 University Station A8000, Austin, TX 78712-0187. Email: eyal{at}mail.cps.utexas.edu

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