Cargando…

Hierarchical and Nonlinear Dynamics in Prefrontal Cortex Regulate the Precision of Perceptual Beliefs

Actions are shaped not only by the content of our percepts but also by our confidence in them. To study the cortical representation of perceptual precision in decision making, we acquired functional imaging data whilst participants performed two vibrotactile forced-choice discrimination tasks: a fas...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Gollo, Leonardo L., Karim, Muhsin, Harris, Justin A., Morley, John W., Breakspear, Michael
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6491505/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31068794
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fncir.2019.00027
_version_ 1783414952449540096
author Gollo, Leonardo L.
Karim, Muhsin
Harris, Justin A.
Morley, John W.
Breakspear, Michael
author_facet Gollo, Leonardo L.
Karim, Muhsin
Harris, Justin A.
Morley, John W.
Breakspear, Michael
author_sort Gollo, Leonardo L.
collection PubMed
description Actions are shaped not only by the content of our percepts but also by our confidence in them. To study the cortical representation of perceptual precision in decision making, we acquired functional imaging data whilst participants performed two vibrotactile forced-choice discrimination tasks: a fast-slow judgment, and a same-different judgment. The first task requires a comparison of the perceived vibrotactile frequencies to decide which one is faster. However, the second task requires that the estimated difference between those frequencies is weighed against the precision of each percept—if both stimuli are very precisely perceived, then any slight difference is more likely to be identified than if the percepts are uncertain. We additionally presented either pure sinusoidal or temporally degraded “noisy” stimuli, whose frequency/period differed slightly from cycle to cycle. In this way, we were able to manipulate the perceptual precision. We report a constellation of cortical regions in the rostral prefrontal cortex (PFC), dorsolateral PFC (DLPFC) and superior frontal gyrus (SFG) associated with the perception of stimulus difference, the presence of stimulus noise and the interaction between these factors. Dynamic causal modeling (DCM) of these data suggested a nonlinear, hierarchical model, whereby activity in the rostral PFC (evoked by the presence of stimulus noise) mutually interacts with activity in the DLPFC (evoked by stimulus differences). This model of effective connectivity outperformed competing models with serial and parallel interactions, hence providing a unique insight into the hierarchical architecture underlying the representation and appraisal of perceptual belief and precision in the PFC.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-6491505
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2019
publisher Frontiers Media S.A.
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-64915052019-05-08 Hierarchical and Nonlinear Dynamics in Prefrontal Cortex Regulate the Precision of Perceptual Beliefs Gollo, Leonardo L. Karim, Muhsin Harris, Justin A. Morley, John W. Breakspear, Michael Front Neural Circuits Neuroscience Actions are shaped not only by the content of our percepts but also by our confidence in them. To study the cortical representation of perceptual precision in decision making, we acquired functional imaging data whilst participants performed two vibrotactile forced-choice discrimination tasks: a fast-slow judgment, and a same-different judgment. The first task requires a comparison of the perceived vibrotactile frequencies to decide which one is faster. However, the second task requires that the estimated difference between those frequencies is weighed against the precision of each percept—if both stimuli are very precisely perceived, then any slight difference is more likely to be identified than if the percepts are uncertain. We additionally presented either pure sinusoidal or temporally degraded “noisy” stimuli, whose frequency/period differed slightly from cycle to cycle. In this way, we were able to manipulate the perceptual precision. We report a constellation of cortical regions in the rostral prefrontal cortex (PFC), dorsolateral PFC (DLPFC) and superior frontal gyrus (SFG) associated with the perception of stimulus difference, the presence of stimulus noise and the interaction between these factors. Dynamic causal modeling (DCM) of these data suggested a nonlinear, hierarchical model, whereby activity in the rostral PFC (evoked by the presence of stimulus noise) mutually interacts with activity in the DLPFC (evoked by stimulus differences). This model of effective connectivity outperformed competing models with serial and parallel interactions, hence providing a unique insight into the hierarchical architecture underlying the representation and appraisal of perceptual belief and precision in the PFC. Frontiers Media S.A. 2019-04-24 /pmc/articles/PMC6491505/ /pubmed/31068794 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fncir.2019.00027 Text en Copyright © 2019 Gollo, Karim, Harris, Morley and Breakspear. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Neuroscience
Gollo, Leonardo L.
Karim, Muhsin
Harris, Justin A.
Morley, John W.
Breakspear, Michael
Hierarchical and Nonlinear Dynamics in Prefrontal Cortex Regulate the Precision of Perceptual Beliefs
title Hierarchical and Nonlinear Dynamics in Prefrontal Cortex Regulate the Precision of Perceptual Beliefs
title_full Hierarchical and Nonlinear Dynamics in Prefrontal Cortex Regulate the Precision of Perceptual Beliefs
title_fullStr Hierarchical and Nonlinear Dynamics in Prefrontal Cortex Regulate the Precision of Perceptual Beliefs
title_full_unstemmed Hierarchical and Nonlinear Dynamics in Prefrontal Cortex Regulate the Precision of Perceptual Beliefs
title_short Hierarchical and Nonlinear Dynamics in Prefrontal Cortex Regulate the Precision of Perceptual Beliefs
title_sort hierarchical and nonlinear dynamics in prefrontal cortex regulate the precision of perceptual beliefs
topic Neuroscience
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6491505/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31068794
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fncir.2019.00027
work_keys_str_mv AT golloleonardol hierarchicalandnonlineardynamicsinprefrontalcortexregulatetheprecisionofperceptualbeliefs
AT karimmuhsin hierarchicalandnonlineardynamicsinprefrontalcortexregulatetheprecisionofperceptualbeliefs
AT harrisjustina hierarchicalandnonlineardynamicsinprefrontalcortexregulatetheprecisionofperceptualbeliefs
AT morleyjohnw hierarchicalandnonlineardynamicsinprefrontalcortexregulatetheprecisionofperceptualbeliefs
AT breakspearmichael hierarchicalandnonlineardynamicsinprefrontalcortexregulatetheprecisionofperceptualbeliefs