Attractors and noise: Twin drivers of decisions and multistability

Perceptual decisions are made not only during goal-directed behavior such as choice tasks, but also occur spontaneously while multistable stimuli are being viewed. In both contexts, the formation of a perceptual decision is best captured by noisy attractor dynamics. Noise-driven attractor transitions can accommodate a wide range of timescales and a hierarchical arrangement with “nested attractors” harbors even more dynamical possibilities. The attractor framework seems particularly promising for understanding higher-level mental states that combine heterogeneous information from a distributed set of brain areas.