Insabato, AndreaDempere-Marco, LauraPannunzi, MarioDeco, GustavoRomo, Ranulfo2015-01-292015-01-292014Insabato A, Dempere-Marco L, Pannunzi M, Deco G, Romo R. The influence of spatiotemporal structure of noisy stimuli in decision making. PLoS Comput Biol. 2014;10(4):e1003492. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.10034921553-734Xhttp://hdl.handle.net/10230/23082Decision making is a process of utmost/nimportance in our daily lives, the study of which has/nbeen receiving notable attention for decades. Nevertheless,/nthe neural mechanisms underlying decision making/nare still not fully understood. Computational modeling/nhas revealed itself as a valuable asset to address some of/nthe fundamental questions. Biophysically plausible models,/nin particular, are useful in bridging the different levels/nof description that experimental studies provide, from the/nneural spiking activity recorded at the cellular level to the/nperformance reported at the behavioral level. In this/narticle, we have reviewed some of the recent progress/nmade in the understanding of the neural mechanisms that/nunderlie decision making. We have performed a critical/nevaluation of the available results and address, from a/ncomputational perspective, aspects of both experimentation/nand modeling that so far have eluded comprehension./nTo guide the discussion, we have selected a central/ntheme which revolves around the following question: how/ndoes the spatiotemporal structure of sensory stimuli affect/nthe perceptual decision-making process? This question is a/ntimely one as several issues that still remain unresolved/nstem from this central theme. These include: (i) the role of/nspatiotemporal input fluctuations in perceptual decision/nmaking, (ii) how to extend the current results and models/nderived from two-alternative choice studies to scenarios/nwith multiple competing evidences, and (iii) to establish/nwhether different types of spatiotemporal input fluctuations/naffect decision-making outcomes in distinctive ways./nAnd although we have restricted our discussion mostly to/nvisual decisions, our main conclusions are arguably/ngeneralizable; hence, their possible extension to other/nsensory modalities is one of the points in our discussion.12 p.application/pdfeng© 2014 Insabato et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)info:eu-repo/semantics/articlehttp://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003492info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess