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Frontal eye field neurons signal changes in decision criteria

Nature Neuroscience volume 12, pages 1458–1462 (2009)Cite this article

Abstract

Flexible links between sensory stimuli and behavioral responses underlie many cognitive processes. One process that contributes to flexible decision-making is categorization. Some categories are innate or overlearned, but, in many cases, category boundaries represent flexible decision criteria that can shift on the fly to adapt to changes in the environment. The ability to shift category boundaries allows decision-making to adapt to changing circumstances. We found that monkeys were able to switch rapidly between two category boundaries when classifying the speed of a moving dot pattern and that neurons in monkey frontal eye field (FEF) changed their activity when the boundary changed. The responses of a subpopulation of FEF neurons that were sensitive to both stimulus and boundary speed were used to classify the stimuli as accurately as the monkeys' performance.

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Figure 1: Speed-categorization task.
Figure 2: Behavioral performance during the speed-categorization task.
Figure 3: Responses of a category-selective neuron.
Figure 4: Example data for two recording sessions.
Figure 5: Relationship between neuronal activity and behavior.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank J. Schall, R. Ratcliff, F. Pestilli, J. Grinband, T. Teichert, C. Barberini and M. Phillips for comments on a preliminary version of this manuscript. This research was supported by US National Institutes of Health grant MH59244 (V.P.F.), the Gatsby Institute (V.P.F.), the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression (V.P.F.) and the Robert Leet and Clara Guthrie Patterson Trust (M.Y.).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Neuroscience, Columbia University, New York, New York, USA

    Vincent P Ferrera, Marianna Yanike & Carlos Cassanello

  2. Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University, New York, New York, USA

    Vincent P Ferrera

Authors
  1. Vincent P Ferrera
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  2. Marianna Yanike
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  3. Carlos Cassanello
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Contributions

V.P.F., M.Y. and C.C. designed the experiments, analyzed the data and wrote the manuscript. M.Y. and C.C. carried out the experiments.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Vincent P Ferrera.

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Supplementary Figures 1–5, Supplementary Results and Supplementary Methods (PDF 4089 kb)

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Ferrera, V., Yanike, M. & Cassanello, C. Frontal eye field neurons signal changes in decision criteria. Nat Neurosci 12, 1458–1462 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.2434

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