Name: Dorottya Hetenyi (Research Fellow, Experimental Psychology, UCL)

Title: The oscillatory dynamics of perceptual predictions in the visual brain

Abstract: Predictions regarding future events are pivotal for how we process sensory information. For instance, it has been proposed that our perceptual experiences are formed of a weighted combination of predictive expectations and incoming sensory data. However, it remains unclear how the brain deploys and maintains predictive signals in anticipation of future inputs. In this talk, I address these questions using MEG to examine both how prior experiences shape perception and how predictive signals are represented in the human brain. First, I demonstrate that neural representations of sensory predictions are embedded in pre-stimulus alpha oscillations, providing support for a mechanism whereby pre-stimulus alpha acts as a carrier of top-down predictions. Next, I will present behavioural findings that reveal how predictive effects on perceptual reports emerge regardless of whether expectations were explicitly instructed or implicitly learned, while metacognition was facilitated specifically for implicit predictions. Lastly, I will present a second MEG study revealing a striking functional dissociation between content-specific and raw occipital alpha signals. This study suggests that these two alpha signals may serve distinct and complementary functional roles in predictive visual perception. Together, these results further advance the classical view regarding the functional role of pre-stimulus alpha oscillations and advocate for a mechanism where pre-stimulus alpha fluctuations may comprise of functionally distinct signals. This opens new directions for research into how the brain balances top-down predictions against incoming sensory evidence.

Website / links: BlueSky: dotproduct.bsky.social