Understanding how the brain makes decisions is a major area of focus in both animal and human cognitive neuroscience. Much of this work, especially in primates, has explicated the role of various cortical areas in forming decisions. In new research, perturbations of the superior colliculus by Jun et al. reveal a large and causal role in accumulating evidence for this midbrain structure classically thought of as being involved in simpler functions related to eye movement control.
Change history
19 July 2021
A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-021-00909-2
References
Jun, E. J., et al. Nat. Neurosci. https://doi.org/10.1083/s41593-021-00878-6 (2021).
Katz, L. N., Yates, J. L., Pillow, J. W. & Huk, A. C. Nature 535, 285–288 (2016).
Zhou, Y. & Freedman, D. J. Science 365, 180–185 (2019).
Hanks, T. D., Ditterich, J. & Shadlen, M. N. Nat. Neurosci. 9, 682–689 (2006).
Balan, P. F. & Gottlieb, J. J. Neurosci. 29, 8166–8176 (2009).
Smith, P. L. & Ratcliff, R. Trends Neurosci. 27, 161–168 (2004).
Hanks, T. D. & Summerfield, C. Neuron 93, 15–31 (2017).
Bennur, S. & Gold, J. I. J. Neurosci. 31, 913–921 (2011).
Huk, A. C., Katz, L. N. & Yates, J. L. Annu. Rev. Neurosci. 40, 349–372 (2017).
Basso, M. A., Bickford, M. E. & Cang, J. Neuron 109, 918–937 (2021).
Rigotti, M. et al. Nature 497, 585–590 (2013).
Steinmetz, N. A., Zatka-Haas, P., Carandini, M. & Harris, K. D. Nature 576, 266–273 (2019).
Huk, A. C. & Hart, E. Science 364, 236–237 (2019).
Musall, S., Kaufman, M. T., Juavinett, A. L., Gluf, S. & Churchland, A. K. Nat. Neurosci. 22, 1677–1686 (2019).
Perich, M. G. & Rajan, K. Curr. Opin. Neurobiol. 65, 146–151 (2020).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Latimer, K.W., Huk, A.C. Superior colliculus activates new perspectives on decision-making. Nat Neurosci 24, 1048–1050 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-021-00885-7
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-021-00885-7
- Springer Nature America, Inc.
This article is cited by
-
Distributed context-dependent choice information in mouse posterior cortex
Nature Communications (2023)
-
Towards a New Paradigm for Brain-inspired Computer Vision
Machine Intelligence Research (2022)