Dr Daniel Feuerriegel (University of Melbourne)

Title: Where are the prediction errors? Three tests for expectancy effects on visual evoked responses

Abstract:

We can rapidly learn repeating patterns in our environment. These learned patterns are often used to form expectations about future sensory events. Several influential predictive coding models posit that stimulus-evoked neural responses in the visual system are reduced when an expected stimulus appears (expectation suppression). However, there is currently scant electrophysiological evidence for genuine expectation suppression in the visual system when relevant confounds are taken into account. To provide stronger tests for expectation suppression in the visual system, we performed three predictive cueing experiments (n=48, n=48, n=60) while recording electroencephalographic (EEG) data. Participants learned cue-stimulus associations during a training session and were then exposed to the same cue-stimulus pairs in a subsequent experiment. Experiment 1 presented faces, whereas experiments 2 and 3 presented oriented gratings. Across the three experiments we did not find evidence that expectations influenced event-related potentials in the first 300ms after stimulus onset (i.e., during afferent visual responses). These findings do not support predictive coding-based accounts that specify reduced prediction error signalling when perceptual expectations are fulfilled. Our results instead highlight the role of other hypothesised processes that allow our minds to adapt to our environments, which do not appeal to prediction error signalling modulations.

Bio:

Dr. Daniel Feuerriegel is an ARC DECRA Fellow and Head of the Prediction and Decision-Making Lab at the University of Melbourne. He uses a variety of neuroimaging techniques in combination with psychophysics and computational modelling to investigate how decision-making and visual perception are implemented within the human brain. His team uses high temporal resolution recording methods, such as scalp and stereotactic EEG, to track the formation of decisions as they unfold over time. His research group is also interested in how our past experience and expectations about future events shape responses of stimulus-selective neurons within the visual system.