Spontaneous repulsive adaptation in the absence of attractive serial dependence

Despite noisy and discontinuous input, vision is remarkably stable and continuous. Recent work suggests that such a remarkable feat is enabled by an active stabilization process integrating information over time, resulting in attractive serial dependence. However, precise mechanisms underlying serial dependence are still unknown. Across three psychophysical experiments, we demonstrate that suppressing high-level modulatory signals on early cortical activity via visual backward masking completely abolishes the serial dependence effect, indicating the critical role of cortical feedback processing on serial dependence. Moreover, we show that the absence of modulatory feedback results in a robust repulsive aftereffect, as in perceptual adaptation, after only 50 ms of stimulation, indicating the presence of a local neurocomputational process for an automatic and spontaneous recalibration of the stimulus representation. These findings collectively illustrate the interplay between two contrasting cortical mechanisms at short timescales that serve as a basis for our perceptual experience.