title: Seeing at a glance, smelling in a whiff: rapid forms of perceptual decision making.
abstract: Intuitively, decisions should always improve with more time for the accumulation of evidence, yet psychophysical data show a limit of 200-300 ms for many perceptual tasks. Here, we consider mechanisms that favour such rapid information processing in vision and olfaction. We suggest that the brain limits some types of perceptual processing to short, discrete chunks (for example, eye fixations and sniffs) in order to facilitate the construction of global sensory images.
authors.affiliation: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, 1 Bungtown Road, Cold Spring Harbor, New York 11724, USA.
authors.forename: Naoshige
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Uchida
authors.forename: Adam
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kepecs
authors.forename: Zachary F
authors.initials: ZF
authors.lastname: Mainen
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology; D003657:Decision Making / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008959:Models, Neurological; D011930:Reaction Time; D012438:Saccades / Q000502:physiology; D012903:Smell / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*