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The Journal of Neuroscience, October 17, 2007, 27(42):11192-11200; doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1072-07.2007

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Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive
Weber's Law in Decision Making: Integrating Behavioral Data in Humans with a Neurophysiological Model

Gustavo Deco,1 Leandro Scarano,2 and Salvador Soto-Faraco2

1Department of Technology, Computational Neuroscience, Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats (ICREA), Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 08003 Barcelona, Spain, and 2Parc Científic de Barcelona, Universitat de Barcelona Hospital Sant Joan de Deu, ICREA, 08950 Esplugues de Llobregat, Barcelona, Spain

Correspondence should be addressed to Gustavo Deco, Department of Technology, Computational Neuroscience, Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Passeig de Circumvallació 8, 08003 Barcelona, Spain. Email: gustavo.deco{at}upf.edu

Recent single-cell studies in monkeys (Romo et al., 2004) show that the activity of neurons in the ventral premotor cortex covaries with the animal's decisions in a perceptual comparison task regarding the frequency of vibrotactile events. The firing rate response of these neurons was dependent only on the frequency differences between the two applied vibrations, the sign of that difference being the determining factor for correct task performance. We present a biophysically realistic neurodynamical model that can account for the most relevant characteristics of this decision-making-related neural activity. One of the nontrivial predictions of this model is that Weber's law will underlie the perceptual discrimination behavior. We confirmed this prediction in behavioral tests of vibrotactile discrimination in humans and propose a computational explanation of perceptual discrimination that accounts naturally for the emergence of Weber's law. We conclude that the neurodynamical mechanisms and computational principles underlying the decision-making processes in this perceptual discrimination task are consistent with a fluctuation-driven scenario in a multistable regime.

Key words: somatosensory; vibrotactile discrimination; decision making; Weber's law; multistability; stochastic neurodynamics; probabilistic behavior

Received March 9, 2007; revised Aug. 17, 2007; accepted Aug. 20, 2007.

Correspondence should be addressed to Gustavo Deco, Department of Technology, Computational Neuroscience, Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Passeig de Circumvallació 8, 08003 Barcelona, Spain. Email: gustavo.deco{at}upf.edu






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