The causal involvement of the visual cortex in visual working memory remains uncertain.

The role of the early visual cortex in visual working memory (VWM) is a matter of current debate. Neuroimaging studies have consistently shown that visual areas encode the content of working memory, while transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) studies have presented incongruent results. Thus, we lack conclusive evidence supporting the causal role of early visual areas in VWM.

Brightness illusions drive a neuronal response in the primary visual cortex under top-down modulation.

Brightness illusions are a powerful tool in studying vision, yet their neural correlates are poorly understood. Based on a human paradigm, we presented illusory drifting gratings to mice. Primary visual cortex (V1) neurons responded to illusory gratings, matching their direction selectivity for real gratings, and they tracked the spatial phase offset between illusory and real gratings.

Parietal theta burst TMS does not modulate bistable perception.

The role of the parietal cortex in perceptual awareness and in resolving perceptual ambiguity is unsettled. Early influential transcranial magnetic stimulation studies have revealed differences in conscious perception following parietal stimulation, fuelling the notion that parietal cortex causally contributes to resolving perceptual ambiguity. However, central to this conclusion is the reliability of the method employed.

Visual cortex: Big data analysis uncovers food specificity.

In visual cortex, anatomically distinct patches respond to distinct categories, such as faces or text. New research confirms this parcellation using unsupervised analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging data obtained from humans viewing tens of thousands of images, discovering one more preference: for food.

The neural coding of face and body orientation in occipitotemporal cortex.

Face and body orientation convey important information for us to understand other people's actions, intentions and social interactions. It has been shown that several occipitotemporal areas respond differently to faces or bodies of different orientations. However, whether face and body orientation are processed by partially overlapping or completely separate brain networks remains unclear, as the neural coding of face and body orientation is often investigated separately.

Disrupting Short-Term Memory Maintenance in Premotor Cortex Affects Serial Dependence in Visuomotor Integration.

Human behavior is biased by past experience. For example, when intercepting a moving target, the speed of previous targets will bias responses in future trials. Neural mechanisms underlying this so-called serial dependence are still under debate.

Consciousness: What is the role of prefrontal cortex?

Consciousness, its neural underpinnings, and the role of frontal cortex are highly debated topics. New evidence shows that human frontal cortex can bias conscious perception. What does this really mean about its contribution to consciousness?

Separated and overlapping neural coding of face and body identity.

Recognising a person's identity often relies on face and body information, and is tolerant to changes in low-level visual input (e.g., viewpoint changes).

Magic, Bayes and wows: A Bayesian account of magic tricks.

Magic tricks have enjoyed an increasing interest by scientists. However, most research in magic focused on isolated aspects of it and a conceptual understanding of magic, encompassing its distinct components and varieties, is missing. Here, we present an account of magic within the theory of Bayesian predictive coding.

Investigating holistic face processing within and outside of face-responsive brain regions.

It has been shown that human faces are processed holistically (i.e. as indecomposable wholes, rather than by their component parts) and this holistic face processing is linked to brain activity in face-responsive brain regions.

Eye-selective fMRI activity in human primary visual cortex: Comparison between 3 ​T and 9.4 ​T, and effects across cortical depth.

The primary visual cortex of humans contains patches of neurons responding preferentially to stimulation of one eye (the ocular dominance columns). Multiple previous studies attempted to detect their activity using fMRI. The majority of these fMRI studies used magnetic field strengths of 4 ​T and higher.

Conscious perception of flickering stimuli in binocular rivalry and continuous flash suppression is not affected by tACS-induced SSR modulation.

The content of conscious perception is known to correlate with steady-state responses (SSRs), yet their causal relationship remains unclear. Can we manipulate conscious perception by directly interfering with SSRs through transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS)? Here, we directly addressed this question in three experiments involving binocular rivalry and continuous flash suppression (CFS). Specifically, while participants (N = 24) viewed either binocular rivalry or tried to detect stimuli masked by CFS, we applied sham or real tACS across parieto-occipital cortex at either the same or a different frequency and phase as an SSR eliciting flicker stimulus.

Decoding subcategories of human bodies from both body- and face-responsive cortical regions.

Our visual system can easily categorize objects (e.g. faces vs.

Human V6 Integrates Visual and Extra-Retinal Cues during Head-Induced Gaze Shifts.

A key question in vision research concerns how the brain compensates for self-induced eye and head movements to form the world-centered, spatiotopic representations we perceive. Although human V3A and V6 integrate eye movements with vision, it is unclear which areas integrate head motion signals with visual retinotopic representations, as fMRI typically prevents head movement executions. Here we examined whether human early visual cortex V3A and V6 integrate these signals.

A Generic Mechanism for Perceptual Organization in the Parietal Cortex.

Our visual system's ability to group visual elements into meaningful entities and to separate them from others is referred to as scene segmentation. Visual motion often provides a powerful cue for this process as parallax or coherence can inform the visual system about scene or object structure. Here we tested the hypothesis that scene segmentation by motion cues relies on a common neural substrate in the parietal cortex.

Real-motion signals in human early visual cortex.

Eye movements induce visual motion that can complicate the stable perception of the world. The visual system compensates for such self-induced visual motion by integrating visual input with efference copies of eye movement commands. This mechanism is central as it does not only support perceptual stability but also mediates reliable perception of world-centered objective motion.

Human V4 Activity Patterns Predict Behavioral Performance in Imagery of Object Color.

Color is special among basic visual features in that it can form a defining part of objects that are engrained in our memory. Whereas most neuroimaging research on human color vision has focused on responses related to external stimulation, the present study investigated how sensory-driven color vision is linked to subjective color perception induced by object imagery. We recorded fMRI activity in male and female volunteers during viewing of abstract color stimuli that were red, green, or yellow in half of the runs.

Integration of visual and non-visual self-motion cues during voluntary head movements in the human brain.

Our phenomenological experience of the stable world is maintained by continuous integration of visual self-motion with extra-retinal signals. However, due to conventional constraints of fMRI acquisition in humans, neural responses to visuo-vestibular integration have only been studied using artificial stimuli, in the absence of voluntary head-motion. We here circumvented these limitations and let participants to move their heads during scanning.

Invariance of surface color representations across illuminant changes in the human cortex.

A central problem in color vision is that the light reaching the eye from a given surface can vary dramatically depending on the illumination. Despite this, our color percept, the brain's estimate of surface reflectance, remains remarkably stable. This phenomenon is called color constancy.

Binocular rivalry transitions predict inattention symptom severity in adult ADHD.

Attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a prevalent childhood disorder that is often maintained throughout the development and persists into adulthood. Established etiology models suggest that deficient inhibition underlies the core ADHD symptoms. While experimental evidence for impaired motor inhibition is overwhelming, little is known about the sensory inhibition processes, their changes throughout the development, and the relationship to ADHD symptoms.

Scene segmentation in early visual cortex during suppression of ventral stream regions.

A growing body of literature suggests that feedback modulation of early visual processing is ubiquitous and central to cortical computation. In particular stimuli with high-level content that invariably activate ventral object responsive regions have been shown to suppress early visual cortex. This suppression was typically interpreted in the framework of predictive coding and feedback from ventral regions.

Attention reorganizes connectivity across networks in a frequency specific manner.

Attention allows our brain to focus its limited resources on a given task. It does so by selective modulation of neural activity and of functional connectivity (FC) across brain-wide networks. While there is extensive literature on activity changes, surprisingly few studies examined brain-wide FC modulations that can be cleanly attributed to attention compared to matched visual processing.

Task-Related Edge Density (TED)-A New Method for Revealing Dynamic Network Formation in fMRI Data of the Human Brain.

The formation of transient networks in response to external stimuli or as a reflection of internal cognitive processes is a hallmark of human brain function. However, its identification in fMRI data of the human brain is notoriously difficult. Here we propose a new method of fMRI data analysis that tackles this problem by considering large-scale, task-related synchronisation networks.

Connectivity Reveals Sources of Predictive Coding Signals in Early Visual Cortex During Processing of Visual Optic Flow.

Superimposed on the visual feed-forward pathway, feedback connections convey higher level information to cortical areas lower in the hierarchy. A prominent framework for these connections is the theory of predictive coding where high-level areas send stimulus interpretations to lower level areas that compare them with sensory input. Along these lines, a growing body of neuroimaging studies shows that predictable stimuli lead to reduced blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) responses compared with matched nonpredictable counterparts, especially in early visual cortex (EVC) including areas V1-V3.

Parietal cortex mediates perceptual Gestalt grouping independent of stimulus size.

The integration of local moving elements into a unified gestalt percept has previously been linked to the posterior parietal cortex. There are two possible interpretations for the lack of involvement of other occipital regions. The first is that parietal cortex is indeed uniquely functionally specialized to perform grouping.