Seeing at a glance, smelling in a whiff: rapid forms of perceptual decision making

Intuitively, decisions should always improve with more time for the accumulation of evidence, yet psychophysical data show a limit of 200–300 ms for many perceptual tasks. Here, we consider mechanisms that favour such rapid information processing in vision and olfaction. We suggest that the brain limits some types of perceptual processing to short, discrete chunks (for example, eye fixations and sniffs) in order to facilitate the construction of global sensory images.

[1]  W. E. Hick.  Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology , 1948, Nature.

[2]  M. Stone.  Models for choice-reaction time , 1960 .

[3]  U. T. Keesey.  Effects of involuntary eye movements on visual acuity. , 1960, Journal of the Optical Society of America.

[4]  J. Krauskopf,et al.  Role of Involuntary Eye Movements in Stereoscopic Acuity , 1961 .

[5]  A. L. I︠A︡rbus.  Eye Movements and Vision , 1967 .

[6]  T Lindvall,et al.  Perceived intensity of odor as a function of time of adaptation. , 1967, Scandinavian journal of psychology.

[7]  J. Nachmias.  Effect of Exposure Duration on Visual Contrast Sensitivity with Square-Wave Gratings*† , 1967 .

[8]  Donald Laming,et al.  Information theory of choice-reaction times , 1968 .

[9]  W. Cain.  Odor intensity after self-adaptation and cross-adaptation , 1970 .

[10]  Herbert Stone,et al.  Changes in absolute detection threshold and in subjective intensity of suprathreshold stimuli during olfactory adaptation and recovery , 1970 .

[11]  Lawrence E. Marks,et al.  Sensory Processes: The new Psychophysics , 1975 .

[12]  Robert Michael Jones,et al.  The effect of micromovements of the eye and exposure duration on contrast sensitivity , 1976, Vision Research.

[13]  Wayne A. Wickelgren,et al.  Speed-accuracy tradeoff and information processing dynamics , 1977 .

[14]  L. Nadel,et al.  The Hippocampus as a Cognitive Map , 1978 .

[15]  G M Shepherd,et al.  Adaptive properties of olfactory receptors analysed with odour pulses of varying durations. , 1978, The Journal of physiology.

[16]  Roger Ratcliff,et al.  A Theory of Memory Retrieval. , 1978 .

[17]  R. Passingham.  The hippocampus as a cognitive map J. O'Keefe & L. Nadel, Oxford University Press, Oxford (1978). 570 pp., £25.00 , 1979, Neuroscience.

[18]  A. Watson.  Probability summation over time , 1979, Vision Research.

[19]  A. P. Karpov.  18 – Analysis of Neuron Activity in the Rabbit's Olfactory Bulb during Food-Acquisition Behavior , 1980 .

[20]  Richard F. Thompson,et al.  Neural mechanisms of goal-directed behavior and learning , 1980 .

[21]  R. Ratcliff.  A theory of order relations in perceptual matching. , 1981 .

[22]  D. G. Laing,et al.  Natural Sniffing Gives Optimum Odour Perception for Humans , 1983, Perception.

[23]  D. G. Laing.  Optimum perception of odor intensity by humans , 1985, Physiology & Behavior.

[24]  D. G. Laing.  Identification of single dissimilar odors is achieved by humans with a single sniff , 1986, Physiology & Behavior.

[25]  R. Duncan Luce,et al.  Response Times: Their Role in Inferring Elementary Mental Organization , 1986 .

[26]  D. G. Moulton,et al.  Olfactory bulb responses telemetered during an odor discrimination task in rats , 1987, Experimental Neurology.

[27]  G. Orban,et al.  Human velocity and direction discrimination measured with random dot patterns , 1988, Vision Research.

[28]  Colin Blakemore,et al.  Vision: Coding and Efficiency , 1991 .

[29]  O. Braddick,et al.  The temporal integration and resolution of velocity signals , 1991, Vision Research.

[30]  David E. Irwin.  Information integration across saccadic eye movements , 1991, Cognitive Psychology.

[31]  J. Movshon,et al.  The analysis of visual motion: a comparison of neuronal and psychophysical performance , 1992, The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience.

[32]  D. Perrett,et al.  Time course of neural responses discriminating different views of the face and head. , 1992, Journal of neurophysiology.

[33]  J. Townsend,et al.  Decision field theory: a dynamic-cognitive approach to decision making in an uncertain environment. , 1993, Psychological review.

[34]  M. Tovée,et al.  Information encoding and the responses of single neurons in the primate temporal visual cortex. , 1993, Journal of neurophysiology.

[35]  Ehud Zohary,et al.  Correlated neuronal discharge rate and its implications for psychophysical performance , 1994, Nature.

[36]  D. G. Laing,et al.  Evidence for the temporal processing of odor mixtures in humans , 1994, Brain Research.

[37]  Philip L. Smith.  Psychophysically principled models of visual simple reaction time. , 1995 .

[38]  L. Cosmides.  From : The Cognitive Neurosciences , 1995 .

[39]  J. Schall,et al.  Neural Control of Voluntary Movement Initiation , 1996, Science.

[40]  E. Bizzi,et al.  The Cognitive Neurosciences , 1996 .

[41]  M N Shadlen,et al.  Motion perception: seeing and deciding. , 1996, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[42]  T. Kurahashi,et al.  Mechanism of odorant adaptation in the olfactory receptor cell , 1997, Nature.

[43]  G. Shepherd,et al.  Imaging Odor-Induced Calcium Transients in Single Olfactory Cilia: Specificity of Activation and Role in Transduction , 1998, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[44]  K. Rayner.  Eye movements in reading and information processing: 20 years of research. , 1998, Psychological bulletin.

[45]  T. Albright,et al.  Efficient Discrimination of Temporal Patterns by Motion-Sensitive Neurons in Primate Visual Cortex , 1998, Neuron.

[46]  Jeffrey N. Rouder,et al.  Modeling Response Times for Two-Choice Decisions , 1998 .

[47]  B. Slotnick,et al.  Performance of mice in an automated olfactometer: odor detection, discrimination and odor memory. , 1999, Chemical senses.

[48]  W. Cain,et al.  Latency and accuracy of discriminations of odor quality between binary mixtures and their components. , 2000, Chemical senses.

[49]  Daniel D. Lee,et al.  Stability of the Memory of Eye Position in a Recurrent Network of Conductance-Based Model Neurons , 2000, Neuron.

[50]  J. Gold,et al.  Representation of a perceptual decision in developing oculomotor commands , 2000, Nature.

[51]  Xiao-Jing Wang.  Synaptic reverberation underlying mnemonic persistent activity , 2001, Trends in Neurosciences.

[52]  James L. McClelland,et al.  The time course of perceptual choice: the leaky, competing accumulator model. , 2001, Psychological review.

[53]  Ehud Ahissar,et al.  Figuring Space by Time , 2001, Neuron.

[54]  P. Lennie,et al.  Information Conveyed by Onset Transients in Responses of Striate Cortical Neurons , 2001, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[55]  W. Newsome,et al.  Neural basis of a perceptual decision in the parietal cortex (area LIP) of the rhesus monkey. , 2001, Journal of neurophysiology.

[56]  H. Seung,et al.  In vivo intracellular recording and perturbation of persistent activity in a neural integrator , 2001, Nature Neuroscience.

[57]  A. Noë,et al.  A sensorimotor account of vision and visual consciousness. , 2001, The Behavioral and brain sciences.

[58]  D. Burr,et al.  Temporal integration of optic flow, measured by contrast and coherence thresholds , 2001, Vision Research.

[59]  S. Thorpe,et al.  The Time Course of Visual Processing: From Early Perception to Decision-Making , 2001, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[60]  G. Laurent,et al.  Dynamic optimization of odor representations by slow temporal patterning of mitral cell activity. , 2001, Science.

[61]  A. Grinvald,et al.  Spatio-Temporal Dynamics of Odor Representations in the Mammalian Olfactory Bulb , 2002, Neuron.

[62]  A. Koulakov,et al.  Model for a robust neural integrator , 2002, Nature Neuroscience.

[63]  Xiao-Jing Wang,et al.  Probabilistic Decision Making by Slow Reverberation in Cortical Circuits , 2002, Neuron.

[64]  John H. R. Maunsell,et al.  Dynamics of neuronal responses in macaque MT and VIP during motion detection , 2002, Nature Neuroscience.

[65]  M. Shadlen,et al.  Response of Neurons in the Lateral Intraparietal Area during a Combined Visual Discrimination Reaction Time Task , 2002, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[66]  H. Seung,et al.  Robust persistent neural activity in a model integrator with multiple hysteretic dendrites per neuron. , 2003, Cerebral cortex.

[67]  G. DeAngelis,et al.  Contribution of Middle Temporal Area to Coarse Depth Discrimination: Comparison of Neuronal and Psychophysical Sensitivity , 2003, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[68]  J. Schall.  Neural correlates of decision processes: neural and mental chronometry , 2003, Current Opinion in Neurobiology.

[69]  Andreas T. Schaefer,et al.  Theta oscillation coupled spike latencies yield computational vigour in a mammalian sensory system , 2003, The Journal of physiology.

[70]  Ranulfo Romo,et al.  Basic mechanisms for graded persistent activity: discrete attractors, continuous attractors, and dynamic representations , 2003, Current Opinion in Neurobiology.

[71]  C. Koch,et al.  Is perception discrete or continuous? , 2003, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[72]  Bruno A Olshausen,et al.  Timecourse of neural signatures of object recognition. , 2003, Journal of vision.

[73]  Z. Mainen,et al.  Speed and accuracy of olfactory discrimination in the rat , 2003, Nature Neuroscience.

[74]  J. Gold,et al.  The Influence of Behavioral Context on the Representation of a Perceptual Decision in Developing Oculomotor Commands , 2003, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[75]  Jianhua Cang,et al.  In Vivo Whole-Cell Recording of Odor-Evoked Synaptic Transmission in the Rat Olfactory Bulb , 2003, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[76]  Ronald S. Harwerth,et al.  Temporal integration for stereoscopic vision , 2003, Vision Research.

[77]  V. Jayaraman,et al.  Intensity versus Identity Coding in an Olfactory System , 2003, Neuron.

[78]  David Melcher,et al.  Spatiotopic temporal integration of visual motion across saccadic eye movements , 2003, Nature Neuroscience.

[79]  M. Shadlen,et al.  A role for neural integrators in perceptual decision making. , 2003, Cerebral cortex.

[80]  Noam Sobel,et al.  Neural Processing at the Speed of Smell , 2004, Neuron.

[81]  Philip L. Smith,et al.  Psychology and neurobiology of simple decisions , 2004, Trends in Neurosciences.

[82]  Andreas T. Schaefer,et al.  Maintaining Accuracy at the Expense of Speed Stimulus Similarity Defines Odor Discrimination Time in Mice , 2004, Neuron.

[83]  Gilles Laurent,et al.  Dynamics of olfactory bulb input and output activity during odor stimulation in zebrafish. , 2004, Journal of neurophysiology.

[84]  Philip L. Smith,et al.  A comparison of sequential sampling models for two-choice reaction time. , 2004, Psychological review.

[85]  W. Bialek,et al.  Time Course of Information about Motion Direction in Visual Area MT of Macaque Monkeys , 2004, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[86]  Roger Ratcliff,et al.  A diffusion model account of the lexical decision task. , 2004, Psychological review.

[87]  Barry J. Richmond,et al.  Information flow and temporal coding in primate pattern vision , 1995, Journal of Computational Neuroscience.

[88]  S. Thorpe,et al.  The time course of visual processing: Backward masking and natural scene categorisation , 2005, Vision Research.

[89]  I. Whishaw,et al.  Home bases formed to visual cues but not to self‐movement (dead reckoning) cues in exploring hippocampectomized rats , 2005, The European journal of neuroscience.

[90]  G. Laurent,et al.  Transient Dynamics versus Fixed Points in Odor Representations by Locust Antennal Lobe Projection Neurons , 2005, Neuron.

[91]  M. Shadlen,et al.  The effect of stimulus strength on the speed and accuracy of a perceptual decision. , 2005, Journal of vision.

[92]  Adam Kepecs,et al.  The sniff as a unit of olfactory processing. , 2006, Chemical senses.

[93]  Xiao-Jing Wang,et al.  A Recurrent Network Mechanism of Time Integration in Perceptual Decisions , 2006, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[94]  Philippe Litaudon,et al.  Respiratory modulation of olfactory neurons in the rodent brain. , 2006, Chemical senses.