Risk attitudes can shift across contexts and even between identical choices. Here, the authors show that as parietal payoff representations grow noisier, the brain leans more on prior beliefs, biasing...

The South East Doctoral Training Arc (SEDarc)

Using a combined approach of monkey electrophysiology, artificial neural networks and human psychophysics, Xue et al. show that neuronal interference from irrelevant information underlies behavioral e...

Royal Holloway Social Purpose CDT

Predictive models have emerged as a normative lens for understanding neural function. In this Perspective, de Cothi, Shipley and Barry plausibly unify the diverse roles of hippocampal acetylcholine in...

Perceptual multistability, observed across species and sensory modalities, offers valuable insights into numerous cognitive functions and dysfunctions. For instance, differences in temporal dynamics a...

Successful strategic behavior must be grounded in beliefs about the opponent and her intentions. While many potential models have been proposed to explain choices in such situations, the neural mechanisms that govern learning and choice in complex strategic contexts remain poorly understood. Here, we use a computational model that combines dynamic learning and choice mechanisms to explain both choices and response times of human participants engaged in a competitive strategic task. Using electroencephalography (EEG), we identify temporally structured stages of neural processing that support an evolving value-based decision process, corresponding to first- and second-order belief updates and evidence accumulation related to the comparison of action values. Gamma-band phase coupling between central and parietal EEG signals varied with individual winning rate, suggesting that strategic behavior involves coordinated information transfer across spatially remote areas. Together, our data characterize the temporally evolving neural dynamics of belief and valuation processes that underlie strategic choice and provide neural validation for assumptions embedded in computational models of this behavior. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. European Research Council, 725355

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The classical view of visual cortex organization as a collection of specialized modules processing distinct features like color and motion has profoundly influenced neuroscience for decades. This fram...

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...

Using artificial neural networks applied to human data, Eckstein et al. show that good models of reinforcement learning require memory components that track representations of the past.

Author summary The human cerebral cortex is thought to encode sensory information in population activity patterns, but the statistical structure of these population codes has yet to be characterized. ...

How the brain adapts its representations to prioritize task-relevant information remains unclear. Here, the authors show that both monkey brains and deep learning models stretch neural representations...

Perceptual experience depends on recurrent interactions between lower and higher cortices. One theory, predictive coding, posits that feedback from higher to lower brain regions decreases neuronal activity predicted by higher-level representations. Despite the widespread adoption of predictive coding in neuroscience, the correspondence to neurophysiological findings in sensory cortices remains elusive. Here, we review how the canonical patterns of intra- and inter-cortical interactions that occur during perception and shifts of attention deviate from those predicted by predictive coding. We argue that these circuit interactions are better captured by alternative theories, which we summarize under the umbrella term BELIEF. We review how BELIEF theories account for the inter-areal interactions during attentive perception.

Nature Communications - Perception can occur in the absence of report. Here, the authors use intracranial recordings to show that sequential sampling of sensory evidence in the ventral visual...

What makes some stimuli more memorable than others? While memory varies across individuals, research shows that some items are intrinsically more memorable, a property quantifiable as “memorability”. ...

Simultaneous recordings were made of hundreds of neurons in the rat frontal cortex and striatum, showing that decision commitment involves a rapid, coordinated transition in dynamical regime and neura...

The term Super-Recognizer (SR), which describes individuals with supposedly superior facial recognition abilities, may be something of a misnomer. In the same way that blind individuals would not be c...

Thoughts on the level of alienation in academic work, and how as much as we cannot exit the economy, we must recognise the inherent value of academia.

Neural dynamics reveal separate stages of spontaneous face perception: EEG shows illusory faces in objects initially resemble real faces then shift to object-like representations, with task demands de...