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Cause for pause before leaping to conclusions about stepping

View ORCID ProfileAriel Zylberberg, View ORCID ProfileMichael N. Shadlen
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/085886
Ariel Zylberberg
Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Kavli Institute and Department of Neuroscience, Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, Columbia University, New York, NY 10032, USA
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  • ORCID record for Ariel Zylberberg
  • For correspondence: ariel.zylberberg@gmail.com shadlen@columbia.edu
Michael N. Shadlen
Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Kavli Institute and Department of Neuroscience, Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, Columbia University, New York, NY 10032, USA
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  • For correspondence: ariel.zylberberg@gmail.com shadlen@columbia.edu
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Abstract

Many neurons in parietal and prefrontal association cortex undergo gradual changes in firing rate during the formation of some perceptual decisions. These dynamics are often ramp-like increases or decreases depending on the sign and strength of the sensory evidence and are thus hypothesized to represent the accumulation of noisy samples of evidence, analogous to biased diffusion. This idea was challenged recently. An analysis of sequences of action potentials recorded from neurons in the lateral intraparietal cortex (area LIP) suggests that the spikes on single trials are explained by rates that undergo a discrete step from an intermediate rate to either a low or high rate at a random time during deliberation. The average of such steps, like the average of biased diffusion, is consistent with the ramp-like firing rates observed in LIP, but a Bayesian model comparison deemed stepping superior. Here we show that a shortcoming in the mathematical depiction of drift-diffusion led to a severe bias in the model comparison. We conclude that at present there is no compelling evidence that favors the stepping account.

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Posted November 11, 2016.
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Cause for pause before leaping to conclusions about stepping
Ariel Zylberberg, Michael N. Shadlen
bioRxiv 085886; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/085886
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Cause for pause before leaping to conclusions about stepping
Ariel Zylberberg, Michael N. Shadlen
bioRxiv 085886; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/085886

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