Decision-related activity and movement selection in primate visual cortex

Fluctuations in the activity of sensory neurons often predict perceptual decisions. This connection can be quantified with a metric called choice probability (CP), and there has been a longstanding debate about whether CP reflects a causal influence on decisions, or an echo of decision-making activity elsewhere in the brain. Here we show that CP can actually reflect a third variable, namely the movement used to indicate the decision. In a standard visual motion discrimination task, neurons in the middle temporal (MT) area of the primate visual cortex responded more strongly during trials in which the animals executed a saccade toward their receptive fields, and less strongly for saccades directed away from the receptive fields. The resulting trial-to-trial variability accounted for much of the CP observed across the neuronal population, and it arose through training. The learned association between MT activity and oculomotor selection was causal, as pharmacological inactivation of MT ne..., , , # Decision-related activity and movement selection in primate visual cortex

This dataset, provided in MATLAB file format (.mat), offers a comprehensive summary of experimental results:

* CP_preGrating.mat: This file include the computed choice probabilities (CP) of all neurons recorded in phase 1 for grating stimuli plotted in figure 3.

* CP_dots.mat: This file include the computed choice probabilities (CP) of all neurons recorded in phase 2 for random dot stimuli plotted in figure 2 and 3.

* CP_postGrating.mat: This file include the computed choice probabilities (CP) of all neurons recorded in phase 2 for grating stimuli plotted in figure 3.

* Timing.mat: This file is included to specify the time window for each column in the CP files plotted in figure 2 and 3.

* PreGrating_CP_vs_Angle.mat: A file contains data of CP against each recording site’s degree of congruency defined as the angle between the receptive field position and the saccade endpoint associated with the...