Uncertainty, inference, and introspection in the primate visual system

灵长类动物视觉系统的不确定性、推理和内省

• 批准号: 10606566
• 负责人: Robbe L Goris
• 金额: $ 39.85万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-05-01 至 2026-04-30
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10606566
• 关键词: Afferent Neurons; Agnosia; Amblyopia; Animals; Area; Bayesian Analysis; Behavior; Behavioral; Behavioral Paradigm; Brain; Code; Cognition; Communication; Cues; Data; Decision Making; Development; Dyslexia; Environment; Foundations; Goals; Human; Knowledge; Macaca; Measures; Memory; Modeling; Monkeys; Nature; Neurons; Noise; Outcome; Pathology; Perception; Population; Prefrontal Cortex; Primates; Probability; Process; Property; Public Health; Reporting; Role; Saccades; Sampling; Schizophrenia; Sensory; Sensory Process; Shapes; Signal Transduction; Stimulus; Surveys; System; Testing; Uncertainty; V1 neuron; Visual; Visual Cortex; Visual System; Volatilization; Work; area V1; area striata; autism spectrum disorder; awake; computerized tools; experience; neural; neural circuit; neural correlate; novel; orientation selectivity; response; sample fixation; sensory input; sensory integration; theories; vision science; visual information; visual process; visual processing; willingness

Title Uncertainty, inference, and introspection in the primate visual system Abstract Perceptual systems offer a window onto a world that cannot be known perfectly. Uncertainty about the world can arise externally, when sensory cues are incomplete or contradictory, or internally, when noise corrupts neural representations. Ideal perceptual systems do not ignore uncertainty, but take it into account. For example, if a sensory cue is ambiguous, prior experience should guide the interpretation of the environment. Likewise, the reliability of sensory signals should inform confidence in perceptual decisions. When humans and monkeys perform perceptual tasks, they often follow these normative predictions. This implies that the neural circuits which process sensory information also survey the uncertainty of this information, and put this estimate to use for perceptual inference and perceptual introspection. How they do so is not well understood. A more precise understanding of the neural processing of sensory uncertainty and its role in perception and cognition may help to advance the treatment of pathologies such as agnosia, autism, and schizophrenia. Recently, several theoretical frameworks have been proposed that offer explicit accounts of the neural processing of uncertainty in low-level sensory and high-level decision-making circuits (linear probabilistic population codes, quadratic probabilistic population codes, temporal sampling models, and the curved manifold hypothesis). These developments form the background for this proposal. We will trace the processing of sensory uncertainty from its initial computation and representation in early visual cortex to its eventual use in informing confidence in perceptual decisions and in regulating the integration of sensory signals and prior information in high-level decision-making areas in prefrontal cortex. We will use the data we collect to compare and contrast the predictions of various theories of neural coding. First, we will study V1 population activity in awake, fixating macaques while presenting stimuli whose orientation uncertainty is manipulated in distinct ways. Next, we will examine how neural activity in primary visual cortex informs confidence in a perceptual estimate of stimulus orientation. Finally, we will identify how sensory uncertainty shapes neural population representations in prefrontal cortex during a perceptual inference task. The outcomes of this work will not only enhance our understanding of the visual system, but will also provide a novel experimental paradigm to study perceptual introspection in animals and a novel computational tool for analyzing behavioral confidence reports.

标题 灵长类视觉系统中的不确定性、推理和内省 摘要 感知系统提供了一个窗口，可以看到一个无法完美了解的世界。世界的不确定性 当感觉线索不完整或矛盾时，可以从外部产生;当噪音破坏神经系统时， 表示。理想的感知系统不会忽视不确定性，而是将其考虑在内。比如一个 感官提示是模糊的，先前的经验应该指导对环境的解释。同样， 感觉信号的可靠性应该告知感知决策的信心。当人类和猴子 在执行知觉任务时，他们经常遵循这些规范性的预测。这意味着， 处理感官信息也调查了这些信息的不确定性，并将这些估计用于 知觉推理和知觉内省。他们是如何做到这一点的还不清楚。更精确的 了解感觉不确定性的神经处理及其在感知和认知中的作用可能有助于 以促进对诸如失认症、自闭症和精神分裂症等病理的治疗。最近有数 已经提出了一些理论框架，对神经处理不确定性提供了明确的解释 在低级感觉电路和高级决策电路中（线性概率群体码、二次 概率总体代码、时间抽样模型和弯曲流形假设）。这些 这一建议的背景是事态发展。我们将追踪感官不确定性的处理过程， 它最初的计算和在早期视觉皮层的代表，其最终用于通知信心， 知觉决定和调节的整合感觉信号和先验信息在高层次 前额叶皮层的决策区域。我们将使用我们收集的数据来比较和对比 各种神经编码理论的预测。首先，我们将研究V1群体在清醒、注视、 猕猴，同时提出的刺激，其方向的不确定性是操纵在不同的方式。接下来我们就 研究初级视觉皮层的神经活动如何在刺激的感知估计中提供信心 导向最后，我们将确定感官的不确定性如何塑造神经群体的表征， 前额叶皮层在知觉推理任务。这项工作的成果不仅将加强我们的 理解视觉系统，但也将提供一个新的实验范式来研究知觉 动物的内省和一种新的用于分析行为信心报告的计算工具。