Perceptual History Biases Are Predicted by Early Visual-Evoked Activity

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Cognitive Science
• Visual Perception

Background:

• Serial dependence is a ubiquitous bias in vision, making current perception influenced by recent past stimuli.
• Neural signatures of stimulus history accompany serial dependence in early visual activity, but their link to behavior is unclear.
• Understanding this link is crucial for comprehending how perceptual history shapes current visual experience.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the relationship between neural signatures of stimulus history and behavioral serial dependence in humans.
• To determine if neural encoding of past stimuli predicts behavioral biases in numerosity, duration, and size perception.
• To ascertain the timing and task-dependency of neural signatures of stimulus history.

Main Methods:

• Electrophysiological recordings and behavioral experiments were conducted on human subjects.
• Stimulus history and behavioral responses were assessed across numerosity, duration, and size perception tasks.
• Analysis focused on neural activity patterns and their correlation with behavioral biases.

Main Results:

• Neural signatures encoded task-irrelevant stimulus dimensions, suggesting a partial dissociation from the behavioral bias.
• Neural signatures of stimulus history were present even without an active task, but were amplified during task performance.
• Early neural activity (∼35-65 ms post-stimulus onset) significantly predicted the behavioral serial dependence effect.

Conclusions:

• Neural signals encoding past stimulus information effectively reflect behavioral serial dependence.
• Serial dependence arises early in the visual processing stream, involving early visual cortices.
• The findings demonstrate that perceptual history is integrated early in visual processing, influencing current perception.