Rhythmic sampling of decision alternatives through attention
1The Zapata-Briceño Institute of Neuroscience for Human Intelligence Research, Madrid, Spain; Physics Department, Institute for Advanced Studies in Basic Sciences (IASBS), Zanjan, Iran.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
|May 13, 2026
Abstract:
Recent work by Siems et al. shows that the brain rhythmically samples competing alternatives through covert spatial attention. This challenges continuous models of decision-making and suggests that evaluation is temporally structured by oscillatory dynamics, with attention determining when alternatives are accessed rather than reflecting changes in their representations.
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