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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...
Parallel Processing01:20

Parallel Processing

The brain processes sensory information rapidly due to parallel processing, which involves sending data across multiple neural pathways at the same time. This method allows the brain to manage various sensory qualities, such as shapes, colors, movements, and locations, all concurrently. For instance, when observing a forest landscape, the brain simultaneously processes the movement of leaves, the shapes of trees, the depth between them, and the various shades of green. This enables a quick and...
Gestalt Principles of Perception01:21

Gestalt Principles of Perception

Gestalt principles provide a framework for understanding how humans perceive objects as unified wholes within their context. These principles are essential in explaining the cognitive processes that make sense of complex visual stimuli by organizing them into coherent groups. One fundamental principle is proximity, which posits that objects located close to each other are perceived as a collective group. For instance, when dots are positioned near one another, the visual system interprets them...
Subliminal Perception01:15

Subliminal Perception

Subliminal perception refers to the processing of sensory information that occurs below the level of conscious awareness. Researchers study subliminal perception by presenting a stimulus, such as a word or image, very quickly, typically around 50 milliseconds. This rapid presentation is often followed by another stimulus, such as a pattern of dots or lines, which blocks further mental processing of the initial stimulus. As a result, if participants cannot identify the initial stimulus better...
Sensation01:21

Sensation

Sensory receptors are specialized neurons that respond to specific types of external stimuli, initiating the process known as sensation. This occurs when sensory input, such as light entering the eye, is detected by these receptors, causing chemical changes in the cells of the retina. These cells then convert the sensory stimulus into action potentials that are transmitted to the central nervous system, a process termed transduction.
Absolute thresholds can quantify the sensitivity of sensory...
Sensory Perception: Organization of the Somatosensory System01:11

Sensory Perception: Organization of the Somatosensory System

The somatosensory system is the central and peripheral nervous system component that senses and processes touch, pressure, pain, temperature, and body position or proprioception. The process of sensation takes place at three levels:
The receptor level:
The receptor level is the first stage of sensation. It involves the detection of a stimulus by specialized sensory receptors. The stimulus must arrive within the receptor's receptive field. Next, the receptor converts the energy of the stimulus...

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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

Brain mechanisms for simple perception and bistable perception.

Megan Wang1, Daniel Arteaga, Biyu J He

  • 1National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
|August 15, 2013
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Multistable perception involves complex brain activity beyond visual areas, highlighting an active inferential process. This study reveals how the brain actively interprets ambiguous sensory information, influencing our subjective experience.

Keywords:
Granger causalityMVPAambiguous imagesfMRIvisual perception

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Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Cognitive Science
  • Psychology

Background:

  • Multistable perception, where subjective experience alternates between interpretations of ambiguous stimuli, has been studied for over a century.
  • While posterior visual areas show activity correlating with fluctuating percepts, perception is increasingly viewed as an active inferential process involving hierarchical brain systems.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To decode perceptual content during bistable and simple perception using searchlight multivariate pattern analysis on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data.
  • To investigate the role of top-down and bottom-up influences in bistable perception and the effect of intermittent stimulus presentation.

Main Methods:

  • Applied searchlight multivariate pattern analysis (s-MVPA) to fMRI data during continuous and intermittent presentation of ambiguous and unambiguous visual stimuli.
  • Decoded perceptual content by analyzing activity patterns across the entire human brain, focusing on both posterior visual and higher-order frontoparietal and temporal regions.

Main Results:

  • Simple perception primarily involved posterior visual regions, whereas bistable perception engaged additional higher-order frontoparietal and temporal areas.
  • Both top-down and bottom-up influences were significantly enhanced during bistable perception compared to simple perception.
  • Intermittent presentation of ambiguous images further increased recruitment of higher-order regions, strengthened top-down influences, and weakened bottom-up influences, suggesting a role for perceptual memory.

Conclusions:

  • The findings strongly support the view of perception as an active top-down inferential process, particularly evident during multistable perception.
  • Higher-order brain regions play a crucial role in resolving ambiguity and constructing subjective experience.
  • The interplay between top-down and bottom-up processing is dynamically modulated by stimulus ambiguity and presentation conditions.