@article{d7d79521fe494998b0e5ca4efedeb45c,
title = "Mice alternate between discrete strategies during perceptual decision-making",
abstract = "Classical models of perceptual decision-making assume that subjects use a single, consistent strategy to form decisions, or that decision-making strategies evolve slowly over time. Here we present new analyses suggesting that this common view is incorrect. We analyzed data from mouse and human decision-making experiments and found that choice behavior relies on an interplay among multiple interleaved strategies. These strategies, characterized by states in a hidden Markov model, persist for tens to hundreds of trials before switching, and often switch multiple times within a session. The identified decision-making strategies were highly consistent across mice and comprised a single {\textquoteleft}engaged{\textquoteright} state, in which decisions relied heavily on the sensory stimulus, and several biased states in which errors frequently occurred. These results provide a powerful alternate explanation for {\textquoteleft}lapses{\textquoteright} often observed in rodent behavioral experiments, and suggest that standard measures of performance mask the presence of major changes in strategy across trials.",
author = "{The International Brain Laboratory} and Ashwood, {Zoe C.} and Roy, {Nicholas A.} and Stone, {Iris R.} and Urai, {Anne E.} and Churchland, {Anne K.} and Alexandre Pouget and Pillow, {Jonathan W.}",
note = "Funding Information: We are grateful to M. Wells, R. Terry, L. Funnell and the Cortexlab at University College London for providing us with the data for the four mice plotted in Extended Data Fig. 3. We are grateful to S. Linderman for developing the beautiful Bayesian State Space Modeling framework of ref.72; as described in our Methods section, we built our code on top of this framework. We thank members of the Pillow Laboratory, the International Brain Laboratory (IBL) and specifically the Behavior Analysis Working Group within the IBL for helpful feedback throughout the project. We thank P. Dayan, S. Bruijns and L. Paninski for acting as the IBL Review Board for this paper. We thank E. Dennis for feedback at various points during the project. We thank A. Russo and M. Whiteway for providing feedback on drafts of this manuscript. We thank H. Bayer for help and advice as we were preparing to submit this paper. Finally, we thank the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments; our manuscript is greatly improved as a result of their input. This work was supported by grants SCGB AWD543027 (J.W.P.) and SCGB AWD543011 (A.P.) from the Simons Collaboration on the Global Brain; grants NS104899 (J.W.P.), R01EB026946 (J.W.P.) and R01EY022979 (A.K.C.) from the National Institutes of Health BRAIN initiative; grant U19 NIH-NINDS BRAIN Initiative Award 5U19NS104648 (J.W.P.); grant 315230_197296 from the Swiss National Fund (A.P.); and Wellcome Trust grants 209558 (the IBL) and 216324 (the IBL). A.E.U. was supported by the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and the International Brain Research Organization. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript. Funding Information: This work was supported by grants SCGB AWD543027 (J.W.P.) and SCGB AWD543011 (A.P.) from the Simons Collaboration on the Global Brain; grants NS104899 (J.W.P.), R01EB026946 (J.W.P.) and R01EY022979 (A.K.C.) from the National Institutes of Health BRAIN initiative; grant U19 NIH-NINDS BRAIN Initiative Award 5U19NS104648 (J.W.P.); grant 315230_197296 from the Swiss National Fund (A.P.); and Wellcome Trust grants 209558 (the IBL) and 216324 (the IBL). A.E.U. was supported by the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and the International Brain Research Organization. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature America, Inc.",
year = "2022",
month = feb,
doi = "10.1038/s41593-021-01007-z",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "25",
pages = "201--212",
journal = "Nature Neuroscience",
issn = "1097-6256",
publisher = "Nature Publishing Group",
number = "2",
}