Oxford Events, the new replacement for OxTalks, will launch on 16th March. From now until the launch of Oxford Events, new events cannot be published or edited on OxTalks while all existing records are migrated to the new platform. The existing OxTalks site will remain available to view during this period.
From 16th, Oxford Events will launch on a new website: events.ox.ac.uk, and event submissions will resume. You will need a Halo login to submit events. Full details are available on the Staff Gateway.
ABSTRACT:
Lateral intraparietal (LIP) neurons represent formation of perceptual decisions involving eye movements. In circuit models for these decisions, neural ensembles that encode actions compete to form decisions. Consequently, decision variables (DVs) are represented as partially potentiated action plans, where ensembles increase their average responses for stronger evidence supporting their preferred actions. As another consequence, DV representation and readout are implemented similarly for decisions with identical competing actions, irrespective of input and task context differences. In my talk, I will challenge those core principles using a novel face-discrimination task, where LIP firing rates decrease with supporting evidence, contrary to conventional motion-discrimination tasks. These opposite response patterns arise from similar mechanisms in which decisions form along curved, one-dimensional population-response manifolds misaligned with action representations. These manifolds rotate in state space based on task context, necessitating distinct readouts. I will show similar manifolds in lateral and medial prefrontal cortices, suggesting a ubiquitous representational geometry across decision-making circuits.
