Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging (WIN), Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom; Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford, Warneford Hospital, Oxford, United Kingdom; Department of Neuropsychiatry, Graduate School of Medicine, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford, Warneford Hospital, Oxford, United Kingdom; Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging (WIN), Centre for Functional MRI of the Brain (FMRIB), University of Oxford, Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, United Kingdom
Mark W Woolrich
Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford, Warneford Hospital, Oxford, United Kingdom; Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging (WIN), Centre for Functional MRI of the Brain (FMRIB), University of Oxford, Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, United Kingdom
Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging (WIN), Centre for Functional MRI of the Brain (FMRIB), University of Oxford, Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, United Kingdom; Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, UCL Institute of Neurology, University College London (UCL), London, United Kingdom
Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging (WIN), Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom; Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging (WIN), Centre for Functional MRI of the Brain (FMRIB), University of Oxford, Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, United Kingdom
Choices rely on a transformation of sensory inputs into motor responses. Using invasive single neuron recordings, the evolution of a choice process has been tracked by projecting population neural responses into state spaces. Here, we develop an approach that allows us to recover similar trajectories on a millisecond timescale in non-invasive human recordings. We selectively suppress activity related to three task-axes, relevant and irrelevant sensory inputs and response direction, in magnetoencephalography data acquired during context-dependent choices. Recordings from premotor cortex show a progression from processing sensory input to processing the response. In contrast to previous macaque recordings, information related to choice-irrelevant features is represented more weakly than choice-relevant sensory information. To test whether this mechanistic difference between species is caused by extensive over-training common in non-human primate studies, we trained humans on >20,000 trials of the task. Choice-irrelevant features were still weaker than relevant features in premotor cortex after over-training.
