The basal ganglia are implicated in perceptual decision-making, although their specific contributions remain unclear. Here, we tested the causal role of the basal ganglia by manipulating neuronal activity in the dorsal striatum of mice performing a visual orientation-change detection (yes/no) task. Brief unilateral optogenetic stimulation caused large changes in task performance, shifting psychometric curves upward by increasing the probability of “yes” responses with only minor changes in sensitivity. For the direct pathway, these effects were significantly larger when the visual event was expected in the contralateral visual field, demonstrating a lateralized bias in responding to sensory inputs rather than a generalized increase in action initiation. For both direct and indirect pathways, the effects were specific to task epochs in which choice-relevant visual stimuli were present. These results indicate that the causal link between striatal activity and decision-making includes an additive perceptual bias in favor of expected or valued visual events.

中文翻译：

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纹状体神经元的激活导致小鼠视觉变化检测过程中的感知决策偏差

基底神经节与知觉决策有关，尽管它们的具体贡献仍不清楚。在这里，我们通过操纵执行视觉方向变化检测（是/否）任务的小鼠背侧纹状体中的神经元活动来测试基底神经节的因果作用。短暂的单侧光遗传学刺激导致任务表现发生巨大变化，通过增加“是”反应的概率而向上移动心理测量曲线，而灵敏度仅发生微小变化。对于直接通路，当预计视觉事件发生在对侧视野中时，这些效应明显更大，这表明对感觉输入的反应存在侧向偏差，而不是行动启动的普遍增加。对于直接和间接途径，效果特定于存在与选择相关的视觉刺激的任务时期。这些结果表明，纹状体活动和决策之间的因果关系包括有利于预期或有价值的视觉事件的加性知觉偏差。