Neural signature of the perceptual decision in the neural population responses of the inferior temporal cortex

Abstract

Rapid categorization of visual objects is critical for comprehending our complex visual world. The role of individual cortical neurons and neural populations in categorizing visual objects during passive vision has previously been studied. However, it is unclear whether and how perceptually guided behaviors affect the encoding of stimulus categories by neural population activity in the higher visual cortex. Here we studied the activity of the inferior temporal (IT) cortical neurons in macaque monkeys during both passive viewing and categorization of ambiguous body and object images. We found enhanced category information in the IT neural population activity during the correct, but not wrong, trials of the categorization task compared to the passive task. This encoding enhancement was task difficulty dependent with progressively larger values in trials with more ambiguous stimuli. Enhancement of IT neural population information for behaviorally relevant stimulus features suggests IT neural networks' involvement in perceptual decision-making behavior.