Coordinated Response Modulations Enable Flexible Use of Visual Information.

Natural perceptual judgments are continuous, generalized, and flexible. We estimate the ripeness of a piece of fruit on a continuous scale, we generalize by judging the ripeness of either a mango or an avocado even though they look very different, we flexibly judge either the size or the ripeness of the same piece of fruit, and we can flexibly indicate the same perceptual judgment using a variety of behaviors such as by speaking or writing any of many languages. Here, we show that the response modulations in visual cortex long associated with cognitive processes, surround modulation, or motor planning are sufficient to guide all these aspects of natural perceptual decision-making. We find that across the population, these response modulations reorient and reformat visual representations so that the relevant information is used to guide behavior via communication with downstream neurons. Our results are an example of a general computational principle for flexible behavior that emerges from the coordinated activity of large populations of neurons.