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Related Concept Videos

Perception01:28

Perception

Perception is a fundamental psychological process that enables individuals to organize, interpret, and consciously experience sensory information. This process is crucial for understanding and interacting with the world around us. It includes both bottom-up and top-down processing, each playing a distinct role in how we perceive our environment.
Bottom-up processing begins at the sensory level, where receptors detect external environmental stimuli. These could include the tactile sensation of...
Perceptual Constancy01:12

Perceptual Constancy

Perceptual constancy is the ability to recognize that objects remain consistent and unchanged even when their appearance varies due to changes in sensory input. There are four main types of perceptual constancy: size constancy, shape constancy, color constancy, and brightness constancy.
Size constancy is the recognition that an object remains the same size, even when its image on the retina changes. For instance, a bus is perceived to be large enough to carry people, even if it looks tiny from...
Factors Affecting Perception01:25

Factors Affecting Perception

Perception is influenced by perceptual set, context, motivation, and emotion. Perceptual set, or perceptual expectancy, refers to the tendency to perceive things in a particular way, influenced by previous experiences and expectations. This phenomenon affects the interpretation of stimuli, creating a set of mental tendencies and assumptions that impact sensory perceptions of sound, taste, touch, and sight.
An illustrative example of a perceptual set is the scenario where an airline pilot told...
Motor and Sensory Areas of the Cortex01:14

Motor and Sensory Areas of the Cortex

The cerebral cortex, the brain's outermost layer, is pivotal in processing complex cognitive tasks, emotions, and various sensory inputs and executing voluntary motor activities. This intricate structure is divided into three primary functional areas: the motor areas, sensory areas, and association areas.
Motor Areas
The motor areas located in the frontal lobe are central to controlling voluntary movements. This region is further subdivided into the primary motor cortex and the premotor cortex.
Vision01:24

Vision

Vision is the result of light being detected and transduced into neural signals by the retina of the eye. This information is then further analyzed and interpreted by the brain. First, light enters the front of the eye and is focused by the cornea and lens onto the retina—a thin sheet of neural tissue lining the back of the eye. Because of refraction through the convex lens of the eye, images are projected onto the retina upside-down and reversed.
Somatosensory, Motor, and Association Cortex01:23

Somatosensory, Motor, and Association Cortex

The somatosensory cortex in the parietal lobes is crucial for interpreting sensory data such as touch, temperature, and proprioception. The somatosensory cortex, situated in the parietal lobes, plays a vital role in interpreting sensory information like touch, temperature, and proprioception—awareness of body position. This specialized brain region features an organized structure wherein neurons at the top primarily process sensations originating from the lower body. In contrast, those at the...

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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 20, 2026

Detecting Pre-Stimulus Source-Level Effects on Object Perception with Magnetoencephalography
09:25

Detecting Pre-Stimulus Source-Level Effects on Object Perception with Magnetoencephalography

Published on: July 26, 2019

Perceptual expectation evokes category-selective cortical activity.

Michael Esterman1, Steven Yantis

  • 1Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218-2686, USA. lr2491@columbia.edu

Cerebral Cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991)
|September 18, 2009
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Anticipating a visual target category primes the brain, speeding up perception. This top-down influence recruits specific visual cortex regions before the object even appears, enhancing recognition.

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Creating Objects and Object Categories for Studying Perception and Perceptual Learning
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Cross-Modal Multivariate Pattern Analysis

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Related Experiment Videos

Last Updated: Jun 20, 2026

Detecting Pre-Stimulus Source-Level Effects on Object Perception with Magnetoencephalography
09:25

Detecting Pre-Stimulus Source-Level Effects on Object Perception with Magnetoencephalography

Published on: July 26, 2019

Creating Objects and Object Categories for Studying Perception and Perceptual Learning
14:38

Creating Objects and Object Categories for Studying Perception and Perceptual Learning

Published on: November 2, 2012

Cross-Modal Multivariate Pattern Analysis
13:51

Cross-Modal Multivariate Pattern Analysis

Published on: November 9, 2011

Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Visual Perception

Background:

  • Selective visual attention enhances target perception by increasing activity in visual cortex.
  • Top-down influences, such as expectations, can modulate perceptual representations.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate how manipulating observers' expectations about an upcoming target's category influences perception.
  • To explore the neural mechanisms underlying anticipatory visual processing.

Main Methods:

  • Participants viewed gradually emerging objects (faces or houses) from noise.
  • A cue established expectations about the object category.
  • Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to measure brain activity.

Main Results:

  • Observers were faster to categorize objects when their category matched expectations.
  • Anticipatory increases in category-specific visual cortical activity were observed, even without visual information.
  • Expecting a face increased activity in fusiform gyrus and superior temporal sulcus; expecting a house increased activity in parahippocampal gyrus.

Conclusions:

  • Visual anticipation facilitates perception by pre-activating relevant cortical mechanisms.
  • Top-down expectation plays a crucial role in efficient visual processing and recognition.