RESEARCH

Our brains make thousands of perceptual decisions every day: is it safe to cross the road? Do I recognize this person in front of me? What did she say? Although we seem to do this effortlessly, perceptual decision making is a challenging computational task for the brain – which needs to integrate information obtained through multiple sensory cues, together with prior knowledge, expectations and context. Furthermore, sensory information is often unreliable and ambiguous.

 

In the Zaidel lab, we study how the brain integrates information from multiple sources in order to make perceptual decisions. We investigate this in humans in a multisensory 3D motion simulator (testing behavior and EEG). We also record neuronal activity (single cells) from rats performing perceptual tasks in a custom rodent 3D motion simulator. Finally, we test how perceptual decisions are affected in different disorders of the nervous system (autism and neurodegenerative diseases).