The Prefrontal Cortex Organizes Visual Evidence by Representational Abstraction

Abstract

Perceptual decisions often depend on both lower-level visual features and higher-level object representations, yet natural images entangle these levels of abstraction. We used deep neural network features to dissociate lower- and higher-level visual similarity during a naturalistic image-similarity judgment task. Participants relied on both forms of evidence, with greater weighting of higher-level similarity. Across prefrontal cortex, visual evidence was systematically organized by representational level: lower- and higher-level similarity were expressed in distinct prefrontal regions during comparison and remained spatially differentiated as they were transformed into decision signals. This organization was behaviorally relevant, with prefrontal activation predicting which level of evidence guided choice when the two conflicted. Together, these findings identify representational level as an organizing principle of prefrontal cortex during visual decisions.