Beta-band frequency shifts signal decisions in human prefrontal cortex

Abstract

Beta-band synchronization has been found to be content-specific, particularly during decision-making. Recently, we showed a beta-band frequency shift in macaque prefrontal cortex to reflect categorical decision outcomes in a temporal categorization task. Here, we sought to replicate these findings in human participants, and additionally asked whether these beta frequency shift dynamics generalize to other task contexts and modalities. Across three EEG and MEG (magnetoencephalography) experiments (n = 82; 42 female and 40 male) that required participants to make a perceptual decision, we found that a beta-band frequency shift in the prefrontal cortex signaled the decision outcome. This finding was consistent across a temporal categorization task, a delayed match-to-sample task, and a cross-modal discrimination task. We conclude that this signal is a robust marker of perceptual decisions.