Conceptual Associations Generate Sensory Predictions

Chuyao Yan, Floris P. de Lange, David Richter

Research output: Contribution to JournalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

A crucial ability of the human brain is to learn and exploit probabilistic associations between stimuli to facilitate perception and behavior by predicting future events. Although studies have shown how perceptual relationships are used to predict sensory inputs, relational knowledge is often between concepts rather than percepts (e.g., we learned to associate cats with dogs, rather than specific images of cats and dogs). Here, we asked if and how sensory responses to visual input may be modulated by predictions derived from conceptual associations. To this end we exposed participants of both sexes to arbitrary word-word pairs (e.g., car-dog) repeatedly, creating an expectation of the second word, conditional on the occurrence of the first. In a subsequent session, we exposed participants to novel word-picture pairs, while measuring fMRI BOLD responses. All word-picture pairs were equally likely, but half of the pairs conformed to the previously formed conceptual (word-word) associations, whereas the other half violated this association. Results showed suppressed sensory responses throughout the ventral visual stream, including early visual cortex, to pictures that corresponded to the previously expected words compared with unexpected words. This suggests that the learned conceptual associations were used to generate sensory predictions that modulated processing of the picture stimuli. Moreover, these modulations were tuning specific, selectively suppressing neural populations tuned toward the expected input. Combined, our results suggest that recently acquired conceptual priors are generalized across domains and used by the sensory brain to generate category-specific predictions, facilitating processing of expected visual input.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Perceptual predictions play a crucial role in facilitating perception and the integration of sensory information. However, little is known about whether and how the brain uses more abstract, conceptual priors to form sensory predictions. In our preregistered study, we show that priors derived from recently acquired arbitrary conceptual associations result in category-specific predictions that modulate perceptual processing throughout the ventral visual hierarchy, including early visual cortex. These results suggest that the predictive brain uses prior knowledge across various domains to modulate perception, thereby extending our understanding of the extensive role predictions play in perception.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)3733-3742
Number of pages10
JournalThe Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience
Volume43
Issue number20
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 17 May 2023

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © 2023 the authors.

Funding

Received Oct. 4, 2022; revised Feb. 10, 2023; accepted Mar. 6, 2023. Author contributions: C.Y., F.P.d.L., and D.R. designed research; C.Y. performed research; C.Y. and D.R. analyzed data; and C.Y., F.P.d.L., and D.R. wrote the paper. This work was supported by the European Commission Horizon 2020 Program European Research Council Starting Grant 678286 to F.P.d.L. and China Scholarship Council Grant CSC201708330238 to C.Y. We thank Xueyan Jiang for assistance with data acquisition. The authors declare no competing financial interests. Correspondence should be addressed to David Richter at [email protected]. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1874-22.2023 Copyright © 2023 the authors

FundersFunder number
European Commission Horizon 2020678286
China Scholarship CouncilCSC201708330238

    Keywords

    • conceptual associations
    • expectation suppression
    • perception
    • predictive processing

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