Dynamic weighting of multisensory stimuli shapes decision-making in rats and humans.
J Vis
; 13(6)2013 May 08.
Article
em En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-23658374
ABSTRACT
Stimuli that animals encounter in the natural world are frequently time-varying and activate multiple sensory systems together. Such stimuli pose a major challenge for the brain Successful multisensory integration requires subjects to estimate the reliability of each modality and use these estimates to weight each signal appropriately. Here, we examined whether humans and rats can estimate the reliability of time-varying multisensory stimuli when stimulus reliability changes unpredictably from trial to trial. Using an existing multisensory decision task that features time-varying audiovisual stimuli, we independently manipulated the signal-to-noise ratios of each modality and measured subjects' decisions on single- and multi-sensory trials. We report three main findings:
(a) Sensory reliability influences how subjects weight multisensory evidence even for time-varying, stochastic stimuli. (b) The ability to exploit sensory reliability extends beyond human and nonhuman primates Rodents and humans both weight incoming sensory information in a reliability-dependent manner. (c) Regardless of sensory reliability, most subjects are disinclined to make "snap judgments" and instead base decisions on evidence presented over the majority of the trial duration. Rare departures from this trend highlight the importance of using time-varying stimuli that permit this analysis. Taken together, these results suggest that the brain's ability to use stimulus reliability to guide decision-making likely relies on computations that are conserved across species and operate over a wide range of stimulus conditions.Palavras-chave
Texto completo:
1
Coleções:
01-internacional
Base de dados:
MEDLINE
Assunto principal:
Percepção Auditiva
/
Percepção Visual
/
Tomada de Decisões
/
Discriminação Psicológica
/
Percepção de Forma
Tipo de estudo:
Prognostic_studies
Limite:
Adult
/
Animals
/
Humans
/
Male
Idioma:
En
Revista:
J Vis
Assunto da revista:
OFTALMOLOGIA
Ano de publicação:
2013
Tipo de documento:
Article
País de afiliação:
Estados Unidos