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Human decision making based on variations in internal noise: an EEG study

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posted on 2023-06-09, 19:21 authored by Sygal Amitay, Jeanne Guiraud, Ediz SohogluEdiz Sohoglu, Oliver Zobay, Barrie A Edmonds, Yu-Xuan Zhang, David R Moore
Perceptual decision making is prone to errors, especially near threshold. Physiological, behavioural and modeling studies suggest this is due to the intrinsic or ‘internal’ noise in neural systems, which derives from a mixture of bottom-up and top-down sources. We show here that internal noise can form the basis of perceptual decision making when the external signal lacks the required information for the decision. We recorded electroencephalographic (EEG) activity in listeners attempting to discriminate between identical tones. Since the acoustic signal was constant, bottom-up and top-down influences were under experimental control. We found that early cortical responses to the identical stimuli varied in global field power and topography according to the perceptual decision made, and activity preceding stimulus presentation could predict both later activity and behavioural decision. Our results suggest that activity variations induced by internal noise of both sensory and cognitive origin are sufficient to drive discrimination judgments.

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Publication status

  • Published

File Version

  • Published version

Journal

PLoS ONE

ISSN

1932-6203

Publisher

Public Library of Science

Issue

7

Volume

8

Article number

e68928

Department affiliated with

  • Psychology Publications

Full text available

  • Yes

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2019-10-14

First Open Access (FOA) Date

2019-10-14

First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date

2019-10-14

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