Perceptual decision-making: extending a standardized rodent task to humans
- 1Leiden University
Abstract
Mice are widely used to study the neural basis of perceptual decision-making, often with the ultimate goal of extrapolating insights to humans. Yet, whether humans and mice rely on similar computational strategies remains rarely tested, partly because the two species acquire knowledge differently. Animals learn from experience, while humans usually receive verbal task instructions. Here, we explicitly contrast these modes of learning in humans who perform a perceptual decision-making task adapted from a standardized rodent task. Specifically, we present an open behavioral dataset from 80 human participants who performed 600 trials of a visual contrast-discrimination task, matched to the standardized International Brain Laboratory task for mice (International Brain Laboratory et al., 2021, 2025). Participants either received verbal instructions ('Instructed') or were only told to discover the rules of the task by playing ('Uninstructed'). The dataset contains choices, response times, continuous cursor trajectories, eye-tracking and pupil recordings. Descriptive analyses show that Uninstructed participants were less accurate and had higher lapse rates than Instructed participants. They improved over the first 200 trials, approaching the performance of Instructed participants. These data provide a benchmark for testing whether computational strategies identified in mice also describe human behavior.
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BibTeX
@misc{hoxha2026perceptual,
title = {{Perceptual decision-making: extending a standardized rodent task to humans}},
author = {I. Hoxha and P. A. Johnson and F. Zang and C. Ucheoma Enwereuzor and A. E. Urai},
howpublished = {bioRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.64898/2026.10.01.755923},
url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.01.755923v1},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Perceptual decision-making: extending a standardized rodent task to humans
AU - I. Hoxha
AU - P. A. Johnson
AU - F. Zang
AU - C. Ucheoma Enwereuzor
AU - A. E. Urai
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/01
PB - bioRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.10.01.755923
UR - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.01.755923v1
AB - Mice are widely used to study the neural basis of perceptual decision-making, often with the ultimate goal of extrapolating insights to humans. Yet, whether humans and mice rely on similar computational strategies remains rarely tested, partly because the two species acquire knowledge differently. Animals learn from experience, while humans usually receive verbal task instructions. Here, we explicitly contrast these modes of learning in humans who perform a perceptual decision-making task adapted from a standardized rodent task. Specifically, we present an open behavioral dataset from 80 human participants who performed 600 trials of a visual contrast-discrimination task, matched to the standardized International Brain Laboratory task for mice (International Brain Laboratory et al., 2021, 2025). Participants either received verbal instructions ('Instructed') or were only told to discover the rules of the task by playing ('Uninstructed'). The dataset contains choices, response times, continuous cursor trajectories, eye-tracking and pupil recordings. Descriptive analyses show that Uninstructed participants were less accurate and had higher lapse rates than Instructed participants. They improved over the first 200 trials, approaching the performance of Instructed participants. These data provide a benchmark for testing whether computational strategies identified in mice also describe human behavior.
ER -