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      Prior Expectations Bias Sensory Representations in Visual Cortex

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          Abstract

          Perception is strongly influenced by expectations. Accordingly, perception has sometimes been cast as a process of inference, whereby sensory inputs are combined with prior knowledge. However, despite a wealth of behavioral literature supporting an account of perception as probabilistic inference, the neural mechanisms underlying this process remain largely unknown. One important question is whether top-down expectation biases stimulus representations in early sensory cortex, i.e., whether the integration of prior knowledge and bottom-up inputs is already observable at the earliest levels of sensory processing. Alternatively, early sensory processing may be unaffected by top-down expectations, and integration of prior knowledge and bottom-up input may take place in downstream association areas that are proposed to be involved in perceptual decision-making. Here, we implicitly manipulated human subjects' prior expectations about visual motion stimuli, and probed the effects on both perception and sensory representations in visual cortex. To this end, we measured neural activity noninvasively using functional magnetic resonance imaging, and applied a forward modeling approach to reconstruct the motion direction of the perceived stimuli from the signal in visual cortex. Our results show that top-down expectations bias representations in visual cortex, demonstrating that the integration of prior information and sensory input is reflected at the earliest stages of sensory processing.

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          Author and article information

          Journal
          J Neurosci
          J. Neurosci
          jneuro
          jneurosci
          J. Neurosci
          The Journal of Neuroscience
          Society for Neuroscience
          0270-6474
          1529-2401
          9 October 2013
          : 33
          : 41
          : 16275-16284
          Affiliations
          [1] 1Radboud University Nijmegen, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, 6500 HE Nijmegen, Netherlands, and
          [2] 2New York University, Department of Psychology and Center for Neural Science, New York, New York 10003
          Author notes
          Correspondence should be addressed to Peter Kok, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen, P.O. Box 9101, 6500 HB Nijmegen, The Netherlands. p.kok@ 123456donders.ru.nl

          Author contributions: P.K. and F.P.d.L. designed research; P.K. performed research; P.K., G.J.B., and M.A.J.v.G. analyzed data; P.K., G.J.B., M.A.J.v.G., and F.P.d.L. wrote the paper.

          Article
          PMC6618350 PMC6618350 6618350 0742-13
          10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0742-13.2013
          6618350
          24107959
          370737c4-1caf-4fd2-be9c-1a0b3e314c2b
          Copyright © 2013 the authors 0270-6474/13/3316275-10$15.00/0
          History
          : 18 February 2013
          : 3 September 2013
          : 6 September 2013
          Categories
          Articles
          Behavioral/Cognitive

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