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Responses of pulvinar neurons reflect a subject's confidence in visual categorization

Nature Neuroscience volume 16, pages 749–755 (2013)Cite this article

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Abstract

When we recognize a sensory event, we experience a confident feeling that we certainly know the perceived world 'here and now'. However, it is unknown how and where the brain generates such 'perceptual confidence'. Here we found neural correlates of confidence in the primate pulvinar, a visual thalamic nucleus that has been expanding markedly through evolution. During a categorization task, the majority of pulvinar responses did not correlate with any 'perceptual content'. During an opt-out task, pulvinar responses decreased when monkeys chose 'escape' options, suggesting less confidence in their perceptual categorization. Functional silencing of the pulvinar increased monkeys' escape choices in the opt-out task without affecting categorization performance; this effect was specific to the contralateral visual target. These data were supported by a theoretical model of confidence, indicating that pulvinar activities encode a subject's certainty of visual categorization and contribute to perceptual confidence.

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Figure 1: Perceptual categorization task.
Figure 2: Graded modulation of pulvinar responses with stimulus ambiguity.
Figure 3: Relationships between opt-out task performances and pulvinar activities.
Figure 4: A model of categorization and confidence.
Figure 5: Pulvinar activity predicts the monkeys' behaviors in the opt-out task.
Figure 6: Selective effects of inactivating the pulvinar on the tasks.
Figure 7: Effects of inactivating the LGN on the task performance.
Figure 8: Functional topography of the pulvinar.

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Acknowledgements

We thank K. Kawano, S. Dehaene, R. Kanai and S. Phillips for valuable comments and critical discussions; R. Tamura and K. Numata for continuous encouragement; T. Mega and A. Muramatsu for technical help and animal care. This work was supported in part by Precursory Research for Embryonic Science and Technology program from Japan Science and Technology Agency, Grant-in-Aids for Young Scientists (A) and Scientific Research on Innovative Areas from Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan (to Y.K.).

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  1. Systems Neuroscience, Human Technology Research Institute, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Tsukuba, Japan

    Yutaka Komura, Akihiko Nikkuni, Noriko Hirashima, Teppei Uetake & Aki Miyamoto

  2. Precursory Research for Embryonic Science and Technology, Japan Science and Technology Agency, Saitama, Japan

    Yutaka Komura

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Contributions

Y.K. and N.H. designed the experiment. Y.K., A.N., N.H. and A.M. collected data. Y.K., A.N., T.U. and N.H. contributed to data analysis. All authors discussed the results and wrote the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Yutaka Komura.

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Komura, Y., Nikkuni, A., Hirashima, N. et al. Responses of pulvinar neurons reflect a subject's confidence in visual categorization. Nat Neurosci 16, 749–755 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.3393

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