Posterior parietal cortex plays a causal role in perceptual and categorical decisions.

Abstract

Posterior parietal cortex (PPC) activity correlates with monkeys' decisions during visual discrimination and categorization tasks. However, recent work has questioned whether decision-correlated PPC activity plays a causal role in such decisions. That study focused on PPC's contribution to motor aspects of decisions (deciding where to move), but not sensory evaluation aspects (deciding what you are looking at). We employed reversible inactivation to compare PPC's contributions to motor and sensory aspects of decisions. Inactivation affected both aspects of behavior, but preferentially impaired decisions when visual stimuli, rather than motor response targets, were in the inactivated visual field. This demonstrates a causal role for PPC in decision-making, with preferential involvement in evaluating attended task-relevant sensory stimuli compared with motor planning.