Date Published:

Abstract:

Perceptual decision-making is fundamental to a broad range of fields including neurophysiology, economics, medicine, advertising, law, etc. While recent findings have yielded major advances in our understanding of perceptual decision-making, decision-making as a function of time and frequency (i.e., decision-making dynamics) is not well understood. To limit the review length, we focus most of this review on human findings. Animal findings, which are extensively reviewed elsewhere, are included when beneficial or necessary. We attempt to put these various findings and datasets - which can appear to be unrelated in the absence of a formal dynamic analysis - into context using published models. Specifically, by adding appropriate dynamic mechanisms (e.g., high-pass filters) to existing models, it appears that a number of otherwise seemingly disparate findings from the literature might be explained. One hypothesis that arises through this dynamic analysis is that decision-making includes phasic (high-pass) neural mechanisms, an evidence accumulator and/or some sort of mid-trial decision-making mechanism (e.g., peak detector and/or decision boundary).

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