Suppressed Sensory Response to Predictable Object Stimuli throughout the Ventral Visual Stream.

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Cognitive Science
• Perception

Background:

• Predictive coding theories suggest prediction is vital for perception.
• Neural mechanisms of predictive modulation in sensory processing are debated, with conflicting findings on response enhancement versus suppression.
• The nature of sensory representation changes (sharpening vs. dampening) due to predictability is unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the neural consequences of perceptual expectation on object stimuli across the visual hierarchy.
• To clarify the mechanism of expectation suppression in visual object perception.

Main Methods:

• Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in human volunteers.
• Statistical learning paradigm with incidentally learned sequential object image predictions.
• Analysis of neural responses in the ventral visual stream to expected vs. unexpected stimuli.

Main Results:

• Strong suppression of neural responses to expected stimuli observed throughout the ventral visual stream, including primary visual cortex, lateral occipital complex, and anterior ventral areas.
• Expectation suppression in the lateral occipital complex correlated positively with image preference and voxel selectivity.
• Evidence supports a dampening account of expectation suppression in object perception, particularly in object-selective areas.

Conclusions:

• Perception is an active inference process that selectively dampens cortical representations of predictable objects.
• Expectation suppression throughout the ventral visual stream, with underlying dampening in object-selective cortex, supports filtering irrelevant predictable stimuli.
• Findings provide novel evidence for predictive coding mechanisms in visual perception.