How unconscious knowledge shapes early visual perception

Abstract

Event Abstract Back to Event How unconscious knowledge shapes early visual perception Catherine Tallon-Baudry1* 1 CIRCM CNRS UMR7225, Hôpital Pitié-Salpêtrière, France We constantly, spontaneously and often unconsciously make inferences on encountered objects and persons. Behavioral studies suggest that we automatically register co-variations in the environment: cows are usually seen in the countryside, keys are to be found on top of the chest of drawers rather than in the fridge, etc... Registered co-variations would in turn influence behavior. How and when is this influence implemented at the neural level? Do unconsciously registered co variations affect early visual processing or rather late decisional stages? We investigated these issues in two very different experimental settings, a visual search task and a personality judgment task, using a combination of magneto-encephalographic recordings in normal subjects and intracranial recordings in epileptic patients. We could show that the very first steps (50-150 ms) of visual processing are influenced by recently and unconsciously acquired knowledge. In both experiments, the key structures appear to be the anterior part of temporal lobe and the orbitofrontal cortex, and, to a lesser extent, lateral posterior temporal regions. Our results point toward the existence of a fast anterior pathway comprising the orbitofrontal cortex and the anterior temporal lobe, that is activated in parallel with the ventral visual system, and that would link prior experience with current sensory inputs. This lends experimental support to the view that visual perception is not a passive process aiming at creating a sensory representation corresponding to a faithful image of the environment, but rather an active combination of knowledge derived from prior experience with current sensory inputs. Keywords: Anterior pathway, visual cognition Conference: XI International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON XI), Palma, Mallorca, Spain, 25 Sep - 29 Sep, 2011. Presentation Type: Symposium: Oral Presentation Topic: Symposium 7: From single neuron responses to neuronal population oscillations during vision and memory: new insights from human intracranial recordings Citation: Tallon-Baudry C (2011). How unconscious knowledge shapes early visual perception. Conference Abstract: XI International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON XI). doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2011.207.00512 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 09 Nov 2011; Published Online: 28 Nov 2011. * Correspondence: Prof. Catherine Tallon-Baudry, CIRCM CNRS UMR7225, Hôpital Pitié-Salpêtrière, Paris, France, catherine.tallon-baudry@ens.fr Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Catherine Tallon-Baudry Google Catherine Tallon-Baudry Google Scholar Catherine Tallon-Baudry PubMed Catherine Tallon-Baudry Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.