# CRCNS: investigating perceptual processing speed and its impact on choice behavior

> **NIH NIH R01** · WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY HEALTH SCIENCES · 2020 · $457,663

## Abstract

Project Summary/Abstract
The goal of this project is to investigate the neural mechanisms whereby perceptual information guides the
choice of where to look next; specifically, we propose to record neuronal activity during urgent decision making
to examine with fine temporal resolution how perception informs motor planning. Neuroscientists normally
study choice behavior with tasks in which a perceptual judgment is made and is followed by a motor report, but
this approach has limitations. First, it allows various covert factors such as attention, anticipation, or task diffi-
culty to be traded against each other, creating ambiguities that cannot be resolved via standard psychophysical
metrics, i.e., reaction time and choice accuracy. And second, serialization suppresses the rapid, reciprocal inter-
action between perceptual analysis and motor planning from which informed saccadic choices normally arise.
Our approach is based on a recently developed task in which decisions are urgent and both of these problems
are minimized. Our framework also includes a heuristic, physiologically grounded model that reproduces the
subjects' rich behavior with great detail. Thus, we propose to study how perception informs motor planning
using time pressure to engage these processes within their natural time scale and dynamics, and relate them
quantitatively to psychophysical performance. Oculomotor activity will be recorded from monkeys trained to
perform several variants of our urgent choice paradigm. In Aim 1 we will investigate the relationship between
exogenous (or bottom-up) attention and motor planning by varying the relative salience of target and distracter
during an urgent choice. We hypothesize that the reflexive, salience-driven form of attention acts through two
specific mechanisms: acceleration of ongoing motor plans that are spatially congruent with it, and halting of
those plans that are spatially incongruent. In Aim 2 we will investigate the relationship between attention,
motor planning, and accumulation of sensory evidence by training monkeys to perform an urgent version of
the well known random-dot motion discrimination task. In this case, because the locations of the two choice
targets are dissociated from that of the stimulus to be discriminated, we expect to observe a tradeoff between
stimulus-driven activity (signaling the deployment of attention to the stimulus) and target-driven activity (sig-
naling the impending eye movement). Our previous and current preliminary results indicate that we will be
able to resolve exquisitely orchestrated interactions between perceptual signals and ongoing motor activity that
unfold very rapidly, within a few tens of ms, and are otherwise experimentally inaccessible. We will exploit
this capability to draw essential functional distinctions between the frontal eye field (FEF) and the lateral intra-
parietal area (LIP), and to determine the distinct contributions of classical cell types (visual, visuomotor, and
motor...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10072353
- **Project number:** 2R01EY025172-09A1
- **Recipient organization:** WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY HEALTH SCIENCES
- **Principal Investigator:** Emilio Salinas
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $457,663
- **Award type:** 2
- **Project period:** 2015-12-01 → 2025-07-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10072353

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10072353, CRCNS: investigating perceptual processing speed and its impact on choice behavior (2R01EY025172-09A1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-21 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10072353. Licensed CC0.

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