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Updated: Nov 9, 2025

A Two-interval Forced-choice Task for Multisensory Comparisons
Published on: November 9, 2018
Stimulus-dependent relationships between behavioral choice and sensory neural responses
Daniel Chicharro1,2, Stefano Panzeri1, Ralf M Haefner3
1Neural Computation Laboratory, Center for Neuroscience and Cognitive Systems@UniTn, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Rovereto, Italy.
Abstract:
Understanding perceptual decision-making requires linking sensory neural responses to behavioral choices. In two-choice tasks, activity-choice covariations are commonly quantified with a single measure of choice probability (CP), without characterizing their changes across stimulus levels. We provide theoretical conditions for stimulus dependencies of activity-choice covariations. Assuming a general decision-threshold model, which comprises both feedforward and feedback processing and allows for a stimulus-modulated neural population covariance, we analytically predict a very general and previously unreported stimulus dependence of CPs. We develop new tools, including refined analyses of CPs and generalized linear models with stimulus-choice interactions, which accurately assess the stimulus- or choice-driven signals of each neuron, characterizing stimulus-dependent patterns of choice-related signals. With these tools, we analyze CPs of macaque MT neurons during a motion discrimination task. Our analysis provides preliminary empirical evidence for the promise of studying stimulus dependencies of choice-related signals, encouraging further assessment in wider data sets.
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