How Decisions about Sight are Relayed in the Brain

Article: Scientists uncover how decisions about what we see are relayed back through the brain
Source: National Institutes of Health, via NEI and ScienceDaily
Published: July 27, 2021

Researchers studying how decisions based on visual information is made, in both forward and backward pathways, is broadcast widely to neurons in the visual system. Feedback, such as visual information about color or shape, help the brain to focus on visual information relevant to decision-making. When a decision is based on what we see, information about expectation (such as a pedestrian on a crosswalk) or attention (like the color of a shirt) is relayed to brain regions involved in visual processing, raising the activity of neurons involved in that object or event. Such feedback might help the brain to focus on difficult-to-see features or help stabilize the decision being made. Some scientists have wondered what happens when two different types of information are relevant to a decision at the same time. To test the question of whether feedback is specific to each type of information, and selective for each decision, the researchers trained monkeys to distinguish whether an object on a screen in a particular location looked concave or convex, while ignoring objects in irrelevant locations. The researchers measured the monkeys' neuronal activity involved in processing visual information while the animals were performing the task. They then tested whether decision-related feedback was selective for both location and depth. According to the news article, "Similar to previous studies, they found that location feedback is selective, but location feedback didn’t vary depending on the decision the animal made, it was only associated the location that the animal was paying attention to. Conversely, feedback related to the object’s depth was associated with the decision, but was spatially unselective, meaning that even depth-sensing neurons that couldn’t possibly be used to make the decision got extra decision-related feedback anyway."

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Quinn KR, Seillier L, Butts DA, et al. “Decision-related feedback in visual cortex lacks spatial selectivity.” Nature Communications. 22 July 2021. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-24629-0