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Published on: May 12, 2019
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Temporal tuning of repetition suppression across the visual cortex
Matthias Fritsche1, Samuel J D Lawrence1, Floris P de Lange1
1Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Journal of Neurophysiology
|November 28, 2019
Summary
Repetition suppression (RS), a neural response reduction to repeated stimuli, decays similarly across visual areas. This challenges the idea that RS timing adapts to changing visual input across the brain.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Visual Perception
- Cognitive Science
Background:
- The visual system adapts to recent input history.
- Repetition suppression (RS) reduces neural responses to repeated visual stimuli.
- It is hypothesized that RS timescales vary across the visual hierarchy, reflecting input statistics.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the temporal tuning of repetition suppression (RS) across the visual hierarchy.
- To test if the timescale of RS is tuned to temporal input regularities.
Main Methods:
- Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used in 12 volunteers.
- The blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) response to repeated and nonrepeated images was measured.
- Interstimulus intervals (ISIs) ranged from 50 to 1,000 ms to assess RS decay.
Main Results:
- RS was maximal for short ISIs and decreased as ISI increased.
- Crucially, RS decay rates were similar in early and late visual areas.
- This finding was contrary to the initial hypothesis.
Conclusions:
- The timescale of RS does not appear to increase along the posterior-anterior axis of the visual system.
- RS is likely not tuned to temporal input regularities.
- This suggests limitations in how RS mechanisms optimize feature processing across visual areas.
