Perceptual decisions exhibit hallmarks of dynamic Bayesian inference

Abstract

To interpret the sensory environment, the brain combines ambiguous sensory measurements with context-specific prior experience. But environmental contexts can change abruptly and unpredictably, resulting in uncertainty about the current context. Here we address two questions: how should context-specific prior knowledge optimally guide the interpretation of sensory stimuli in changing environments, and do human decision-making strategies resemble this optimum? We probe these questions with a task in which subjects report the orientation of ambiguous visual stimuli that were drawn from three dynamically switching distributions, representing different environmental contexts. We derive predictions for an ideal Bayesian observer that leverages the statistical structure of the task to maximize decision accuracy and show that its decisions are biased by task context. The magnitude of this decision bias is not a fixed property of the sensory measurement but depends on the observers belief about the current context. The model therefore predicts that decision bias will grow with the reliability of the context cue, the stability of the environment, and with the number of trials since the last context switch. Analysis of human choice data validates all three predictions, providing evidence that the brain continuously updates probabilistic representations of the environment to best interpret an uncertain, ever-changing world. SIGNIFICANCEThe brain relies on prior knowledge to make perceptual inferences when sensory information is ambiguous. However, when the environmental context changes, the appropriate prior knowledge often changes with it. Here, we develop a Bayesian observer model to investigate how to make optimal perceptual inferences when sensory information and environmental context are both uncertain. The behavioral signature of this strategy is a context-appropriate decision bias whose strength grows with the reliability of the context cue, the stability of the environment, and with the number of decisions since the most recent change in context. We identified exactly this pattern in the behavior of human subjects performing a dynamic orientation discrimination task. Together, our results suggest that the brain continuously updates probabilistic representations of the environment to make perceptual decisions in the face of uncertainty over both sensory and contextual information.