Limitation of switching sensory information flow in flexible perceptual decision making
Abstract Humans can flexibly change rules to categorize sensory stimuli, but their performance degrades immediately after a task switch. This switch cost is believed to reflect a limitation in cognitive control, although the bottlenecks remain controversial. Here, we show that humans exhibit a brief...
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| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Nature Portfolio
2025-01-01
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| Series: | Nature Communications |
| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-55686-w |
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| Summary: | Abstract Humans can flexibly change rules to categorize sensory stimuli, but their performance degrades immediately after a task switch. This switch cost is believed to reflect a limitation in cognitive control, although the bottlenecks remain controversial. Here, we show that humans exhibit a brief reduction in the efficiency of using sensory inputs to form a decision after a rule change. Participants classified face stimuli based on one of two rules, switching every few trials. Psychophysical reverse correlation and computational modeling reveal a reduction in sensory weighting, which recovers within a few hundred milliseconds after stimulus presentation. This reduction depends on the sensory features being switched, suggesting a constraint in routing the sensory information flow. We propose that decision-making circuits cannot fully adjust their sensory readout based on a context cue alone, but require the presence of an actual stimulus to tune it, leading to a limitation in flexible perceptual decision making. |
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| ISSN: | 2041-1723 |