Large-scale Dynamics of Perceptual Decision Information across Human Cortex

Abstract

Perceptual decisions entail the accumulation of sensory evidence for a particular choice towards an action plan. An influential framework holds that sensory cortical areas encode the instantaneous sensory evidence and downstream, action-related regions accumulate this evidence. The large-scale distribution of this computation across the cerebral cortex has remained largely elusive. We developed a regionally-specific magnetoencephalography decoding approach to exhaustively map the dynamics of stimulus- and choice-specific signals across the human cortical surface during a visual decision. Comparison with the evidence accumulation dynamics inferred from behavior enabled us to disentangle stimulus-dependent and endogenous components of choice-predictive activity across the visual cortical hierarchy. The endogenous component was present in primary visual cortex, expressed in a low (< 20 Hz) frequency-band, and its time course tracked, with delay, the build-up of choice-predictive activity in (pre-)motor regions. Our results are consistent with choice-specific cortical feedback signaling in a specific frequency channel during decision formation.