EPS Mid-Career Award 2008 Seeing the future: Natural image sequences produce 'anticipatory' neuronal activity and bias perceptual report

摘要

This paper relates human perception to the functioning of cells in the temporal cortex that are engagedin high-level pattern processing. We review historical developments concerning (a) the functionalorganization of cells processing faces and (b) the selectivity for faces in cell responses. We thenfocus on (c) the comparison of perception and cell responses to images of faces presented in sequencesof unrelated images. Specifically the paper concerns the cell function and perception in circumstanceswhere meaningful patterns occur momentarily in the context of a naturally or unnaturally changingvisual environment. Experience of visual sequences allows anticipation, yet one sensory stimulusalso "masks" perception and neural processing of subsequent stimuli. To understand this paradoxwe compared cell responses in monkey temporal cortex to body images presented individually, inpairs and in action sequences. Responses to one image suppressed responses to similar images forms. This suppression led to responses peaking 100 ms earlier to image sequences than toisolated images (e.g., during head rotation, face-selective activity peaks before the face confronts the observer). Thus forward masking has unrecognized benefits for perception because it can trans-form neuronal activity to make it predictive during natural change.