Abstract
Neurons in the superior colliculus (SC), like those in cortex, are modulated by shifts in attention but contribute differently from visual cortex neurons. It remains debated whether SC attention-related activity represents enhanced perceptual sensitivity, decision criterion shifts, or motor bias linked to saccade planning at neurons’ response fields. We dissociated these components by independently controlling behavioral sensitivity, perceptual decision criterion, and motor response criterion in a visual spatial attention task in two male rhesus monkeys. SC activity correlated strongly with behavioral sensitivity and motor criterion for selecting a saccade target within the response field, independent of saccade execution. In contrast, SC responses remained unchanged despite large shifts in decision criterion when motor bias was excluded. Notably, SC activity did not predict trial-by-trial choice accuracy. These results demonstrate that the SC specifically supports components of attention related to heightened perceptual sensitivity and response selection, while being largely independent of internal perceptual decision criterion and trial outcome.
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All data are available in the main text, source data or the supplementary information. Source data are provided with this paper.
Code availability
All behavioral and neuronal data analysis was done using Matlab (MathWorks Inc.). Behavioral task was controlled using custom-written software (https://github.com/MaunsellLab/Lablib-Public-05-February-2026).
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Acknowledgements
We thank Chery J. Cherian and Lai Wei for critical feedback on the manuscript; Rachel Parker for technical help with monkey procedures. This work was supported by National Institutes of Health grant R01EY005911 (J.H.R.M.) and Brain and Behavior Research Foundation grant NARSAD 28812 (S.G.). The funder had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
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S.G. and J.H.R.M. designed the experiments, performed the surgeries, and wrote the paper. S.G. performed the experiments and analyzed the data.
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Ghosh, S., Maunsell, J.H.R. Attention-related modulation in the superior colliculus encodes perceptual sensitivity, but not perceptual choice. Nat Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-69954-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-69954-4
