Dynamics of Visual Perceptual Decision-Making in Freely Behaving

The temporal dynamics of perceptual decisions offer a key window into the cognitive processes contributing to decision-making. Investigating perceptual dynamics in a genetically tractable animal model can facilitate the subsequent unpacking of the underlying neural mechanisms. Here, we investigated the time course as well as fundamental psychophysical constants governing visual perceptual decision-making in freely behaving mice. We did so by analyzing response accuracy against reaction time (RT), i.e., conditional accuracy, in a series of two-alternative forced choice (2-AFC) orientation discrimination tasks in which we varied target size, luminance, duration, and presence of a foil. Our results quantified two distinct stages in the time course of mouse visual decision-making: a “sensory encoding” stage in which conditional accuracy exhibits a classic trade-off with response speed, and a subsequent “short-term memory (STM)-dependent” stage in which conditional accuracy exhibits a classic asymptotic decay following stimulus offset. We estimated the duration of visual sensory encoding as 200–320 ms across tasks, the lower bound of the duration of STM as ∼1700 ms, and the briefest duration of visual stimulus input that is informative as ≤50 ms. Separately, by varying stimulus onset delay, we demonstrated that the conditional accuracy function (CAF) and RT distribution can be independently modulated, and found that the duration for which mice naturally withhold from responding is a quantitative metric of impulsivity. Taken together, our results establish a quantitative foundation for investigating the neural circuit bases of visual decision dynamics in mice.

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