TY - JOUR T1 - Temporal integration of auditory information is invariant to temporal grouping cues JF - eneuro JO - eneuro DO - 10.1523/ENEURO.0077-14.2015 SP - ENEURO.0077-14.2015 AU - Andrew S.K. Liu AU - Joji Tsunada AU - Joshua I. Gold AU - Yale E. Cohen Y1 - 2015/04/20 UR - http://www.eneuro.org/content/early/2015/04/20/ENEURO.0077-14.2015.abstract N2 - Auditory perception depends on the temporal structure of incoming acoustic stimuli. Here, we examined whether a temporal manipulation that affects the perceptual grouping also affects the time dependence of decisions regarding those stimuli. We designed a novel discrimination task that required human listeners to decide whether a sequence of tone bursts was increasing or decreasing in frequency. We manipulated temporal perceptual-grouping cues by changing the time interval between the tone bursts, which led to listeners hearing the sequences as a single sound for short intervals or discrete sounds for longer intervals. Despite these strong perceptual differences, this manipulation did not affect the efficiency of how auditory information was integrated over time to form a decision. Instead, the grouping manipulation affected subjects’ speed-accuracy trade-offs. These results indicate that the temporal dynamics of evidence accumulation for auditory perceptual decisions can be invariant to manipulations that affect the perceptual grouping of the evidence. Significance Statement: Auditory perception depends on perceptual grouping cues, which relate to how the brain parses the auditory scene into distinct perceptual units, and auditory decisions, which relate to how the brain identifies a sound. These two processes are not independent because both rely on the temporal structure of the acoustic stimulus. However, the effects of this temporal structure on perceptual grouping and decision-making are not known. Here, we combined psychophysical testing with computational modeling to test the interaction of temporal perceptual grouping cues with the temporal processes that underlie perceptual decision-making. We found that temporal grouping cues do not affect the efficiency by which sensory evidence is accumulated to form a decision. Instead, the grouping cues modulate a subject’s speed-accuracy trade-off. ER -