Neuronal correlates of serial decision-making in the supplementary eye field
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Abstract
Human behavior is influenced by serial decision-making: past decisions affect choices
that set the context for selecting future options. A primate brain region that may
be involved in linking decisions across time is the supplementary eye field (SEF),
which, in addition to its well-known visual responses and saccade-related activity,
also signals the rules that govern flexible decisions and the outcomes of those decisions.
Our hypotheses were that SEF neurons encode events during serial decision-making and
link the sequential decisions with sustained activity. We recorded from neurons in
the SEF of two rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta, one male, one female) that performed
a serial decision-making task. The monkeys used saccades to select a rule that had
to be applied later in the same trial to discriminate between visual stimuli. We found,
first, that SEF neurons encoded the spatial parameters of saccades during rule selection
but not during visual discrimination, suggesting a malleability to their movement-related
tuning. Second, SEF activity linked the sequential decisions of rule selection and
visual discrimination, but not continuously. Instead, rule-encoding activity appeared
in a “just-in-time” manner before the visual discrimination. Third, SEF neurons encoded
trial outcomes both prospectively, before decisions within a trial, and retrospectively,
across multiple trials. The results thus identify neuronal correlates of rule selection
and application in the SEF, including transient signals that link these sequential
decisions. Its activity patterns suggest that the SEF participates in serial decision-making
in a contextually-dependent manner as part of a broader network.
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https://hdl.handle.net/10161/17213Collections
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Show full item recordScholars@Duke
Marc A. Sommer
Professor of Biomedical Engineering
We study circuits for cognition. Using a combination of neurophysiology and biomedical
engineering, we focus on the interaction between brain areas during visual perception,
decision-making, and motor planning. Specific projects include the role of frontal
cortex in metacognition, the role of cerebellar-frontal circuits in action timing,
the neural basis of "good enough" decision-making (satisficing), and the neural mechanisms
of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS).

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