Stimulus-choice (mis)alignment in primate area MT
Fig 8
Four possible sources of neural-choice correlation.
1-dimensional stimulus drive to MT is picked up as population variability along with other noise correlations denoted x1(t), x2(t), x3(t). To optimally perform the task, the choice should rely on only the stimulus dimension, and hence noise in x1 shows up as CP in relevant units reflecting their ‘readout’ strategy (case 1). Non-optimal readout can provide CP through stimulus-irrelevant variability (case 3). Alternatively, feedback from the decision-making process to MT can provide choice-correlation in the stimulus-irrelevant subspace (case 4) without corrupting the optimal representation or the stimulus driven shared dimension (case 2) causing non-optimal behavior.