BAVRD 2024

Speaker: Michael Silver PhD

Institution: University of California Berkeley

Talk Title: Predictions and visual perceptual selection

Abstract: Internally generated predictions about visual events or stimuli can have substantial effects on visual perception. In some cases, there is enhancement of perception for those stimuli that match predictions, while in other cases, perception of predicted stimuli is suppressed to emphasize unexpected stimuli that do not match predictions. I will describe a series of studies in human subjects in which we manipulated the predictability of upcoming visual stimuli and employed binocular rivalry to assess the effects of these predictions on visual perceptual selection. In each binocular rivalry display, one eye’s stimulus was consistent with the subject’s predictions, while the other eye’s stimulus was inconsistent with these predictions. The results from these studies raise the possibility that stimuli that are preferentially processed early in the visual cortical pathways are more likely to be enhanced when they are predicted, while stimuli processed at higher levels of the visual hierarchy are more likely to be enhanced when they are surprising.