Hyafil, AlexandreMoreno Bote, Rubén2019-06-192019-06-192017Hyafil A, Moreno-Bote R. Breaking down hierarchies of decision-making in primates. Elife. 2017;6:e16650. DOI: 10.7554/eLife.16650.001http://hdl.handle.net/10230/41834Possible options in a decision often organize as a hierarchy of subdecisions. A recent study concluded that perceptual processes in primates mimic this hierarchical structure and perform subdecisions in parallel. We argue that a flat model that directly selects between final choices accounts more parsimoniously for the reported behavioral and neural data. Critically, a flat model is characterized by decision signals integrating evidence at different hierarchical levels, in agreement with neural recordings showing this integration in localized neural populations. Our results point to the role of experience for building integrated perceptual categories where sensory evidence is merged prior to decision.application/pdfeng© Hyafil A, Moreno-Bote R et al. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.info:eu-repo/semantics/articlehttp://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.16650.001info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess