Distributed processing of side-choice biases

Abstract

Psychophysics describes how variations in stimulus strength lead to changes in perceptual performance. Yet, the contribution of non-sensory information processing to perceptual decision making is still not fully understood. For instance, in two-alternative forced-choice tasks, observers can exhibit tendencies to choose more one alternative over another, with no apparent goal or function. Such choice biases are highly prevalent in mice and, in free-choice tasks, they are insensitive to changes in stimulus discriminability. Thus, a reasonable proposal is that these side-choice biases could derive from functional asymmetries in sensory processing, decision making, or both. Here, we explored how different circuits participate in the production of choice biases in adult mice. We found that the magnitude of the changes in biased choice behavior depended on the inactivated region. Indeed, contralateral, but not ipsilateral, inactivations of the primary visual and posterior parietal cortices reduced the probability of mice choosing their preferred side. In contrast, ipsilateral inactivations of the subtantia nigra pars reticulata and of the frontal orienting fields, reduced and increased the probabilities of mice choosing their preferred side, respectively. These results demonstrate that internal circuit processing contributes to side-choice behavior and illustrates how distinct brain regions could participate in producing normal to aberrant levels of choice variability.