Sensory adaptation and pupil-linked arousal support flexible evidence accumulation during perceptual decision making
Effective decision making in dynamic environments requires flexible evidence accumulation. Although models often express this flexibility as a property of the accumulator, its implementation in the brain may involve adaptive mechanisms operating at other stages of the decision process. We examined two such mechanisms: (1) stimulus-specific sensory adaptation at the level of evidence encoding, and…
In a study examining flexible decision making in dynamic environments, researchers explored two potential mechanisms: stimulus-specific sensory adaptation and arousal-related neuromodulation. By measuring single-unit activity in the middle temporal (MT) area and monitoring pupil-linked arousal in monkeys performing a modified random-dot motion direction-discrimination task, the findings revealed that monkeys' decisions were influenced by adaptive evidence accumulation that depended on temporal-context stability.
The study demonstrated that both stimulus-specific sensory adaptation within the MT area and task-evoked pupil responses exhibited context-dependent changes, indicating that multiple mechanisms contribute to flexible, context-dependent evidence accumulation. Importantly, the research showed that adaptation and pupil adjustments were not directly related, suggesting that changes in sensory adaptation shape evidence encoding, while changes in arousal may shape the accumulation process itself.
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