How does V1 population activity inform perceptual certainty?

Neural population activity in sensory cortex informs our perceptual interpretation of the environment. Oftentimes, this population activity will support multiple alternative interpretations. The larger the spread of probability over different alternatives, the more uncertain the selected perceptual interpretation.

Confidence reflects a noisy decision reliability estimate.

Decisions vary in difficulty. Humans know this and typically report more confidence in easy than in difficult decisions. However, confidence reports do not perfectly track decision accuracy, but also reflect response biases and difficulty misjudgements.

Representation of visual uncertainty through neural gain variability.

Uncertainty is intrinsic to perception. Neural circuits which process sensory information must therefore also represent the reliability of this information. How they do so is a topic of debate.

Speed invariance of tactile texture perception.

The nervous system achieves stable perceptual representations of objects despite large variations in the activity patterns of sensory receptors. Here, we explore perceptual constancy in the sense of touch. Specifically, we investigate the invariance of tactile texture perception across changes in scanning speed.