Abstract
Perception is guided by the anticipation of future events. It has been hypothesized that this process may be implemented by pattern completion in early visual cortex, in which a stimulus sequence is recreated after only a subset of the visual input is provided. Here we test this hypothesis using ultra-fast functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure BOLD activity at precisely defined receptive field locations in visual cortex (V1) of human volunteers. We find that after familiarizing subjects with a spatial sequence, flashing only the starting point of the sequence triggers an activity wave in V1 that resembles the full stimulus sequence. This preplay activity is temporally compressed compared to the actual stimulus sequence and remains present even when attention is diverted from the stimulus sequence. Preplay might therefore constitute an automatic prediction mechanism for temporal sequences in V1.
Highlights
Perception is guided by the anticipation of future events
This anticipatory activity wave was temporally compressed compared to the actual stimulus sequence and was present even when attention was diverted from the stimulus sequence
Human observers were exposed to a dot that rapidly moved across the screen from left-to-right or right-to-left for a 4 min period, while maintaining fixation (Fig. 1a)
Summary
Perception is guided by the anticipation of future events. It has been hypothesized that this process may be implemented by pattern completion in early visual cortex, in which a stimulus sequence is recreated after only a subset of the visual input is provided. We find that after familiarizing subjects with a spatial sequence, flashing only the starting point of the sequence triggers an activity wave in V1 that resembles the full stimulus sequence This preplay activity is temporally compressed compared to the actual stimulus sequence and remains present even when attention is diverted from the stimulus sequence. Real-world predictions are typically dynamic: for example, we predict the trajectory of a ball moving towards us or whether a car will hit us if we cross the road Implementing this kind of dynamic prediction is more complex, as it requires an anticipatory wave of visual responses that is both spatially and temporally precise. This preplay activity may reflect an automatic prediction mechanism for visual sequences
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