Alpha oscillations protect auditory working memory against distractors in the encoding phase.

Alpha oscillations are proposed to serve the function of inhibition to protect items in working memory from intruding information. In a modified Sternberg paradigm, alpha power was initially found to increase at the anticipation of strong compared to weak distractors, reflecting the active gating of distracting information from interfering with the memory trace. However, there was a lack of evidence supporting the inhibition account of alpha oscillations in later studies using similar experimental design with greater temporal disparity between the encoding phase and the presentation of the distractors.

Longitudinal Evidence for Attenuated Local-Global Deviance Detection as a Precursor of Working Memory Decline.

From the perspective of predictive coding, normal aging is accompanied by decreased weighting of sensory inputs and increased reliance on predictions, resulting in the attenuation of prediction errors in older age. Recent electroencephalography (EEG) research further revealed that the age-related shift from sensorium to predictions is hierarchy-selective, as older brains show little reduction in lower-level but significant suppression in higher-level prediction errors. Moreover, the disrupted propagation of prediction errors from the lower-level to the higher-level seems to be linked to deficient maintenance of information in working memory.

The mismatch negativity to abstract relationship of tone pairs is independent of attention.

The mismatch negativity (MMN) implicating a comparison process between the deviant and the memory trace of the standard can be elicited by not only changes in physical features but also violations of abstract patterns. It is considered pre-attentive, yet the use of the passive design makes it difficult to exclude the possibility of attention leak. In contrast to how this issue has been well addressed with the MMN to physical changes, much less research directly investigated the attentional effect on the MMN to abstract relationships.

Load-dependent alpha suppression is related to working memory capacity for numbers.

Alpha suppression is proposed to reflect a surge in cortical excitability to enhance stimulus processing in working memory. The attenuated state of alpha might reflect the prioritisation of behaviourally relevant information, making it a proxy for working memory functioning. Despite the growing interest in utilising the advancement of brain-based measures to evaluate individuals' cognitive processes, there was a lack of consistent evidence on the relationship between alpha suppression and working memory performance.

Intention-based and sensory-based predictions.

We inhabit a continuously changing world, where the ability to anticipate future states of the environment is critical for adaptation. Anticipation can be achieved by learning about the causal or temporal relationship between sensory events, as well as by learning to act on the environment to produce an intended effect. Together, sensory-based and intention-based predictions provide the flexibility needed to successfully adapt.

Visual Predictions Operate on Different Timescales.

Humans live in a volatile environment, subject to changes occurring at different timescales. The ability to adjust internal predictions accordingly is critical for perception and action. We studied this ability with two EEG experiments in which participants were presented with sequences of four Gabor patches, simulating a rotation, and instructed to respond to the last stimulus (target) to indicate whether or not it continued the direction of the first three stimuli.

Attention modulates repetition effects in a context of low periodicity.

Stimulus repetition can result in a reduction in neural responses (i.e., repetition suppression) in neuroimaging studies.

Both contextual regularity and selective attention affect the reduction of precision-weighted prediction errors but in distinct manners.

Predictive coding model of perception postulates that the primary objective of the brain is to infer the causes of sensory inputs by reducing prediction errors (i.e., the discrepancy between expected and actual information).

Human Brain Ages With Hierarchy-Selective Attenuation of Prediction Errors.

From the perspective of predictive coding, our brain embodies a hierarchical generative model to realize perception, which proactively predicts the statistical structure of sensory inputs. How are these predictive processes modified as we age? Recent research suggested that aging leads to decreased weighting of sensory inputs and increased reliance on predictions. Here we investigated whether this age-related shift from sensorium to predictions occurs at all levels of hierarchical message passing.

Context-dependent minimisation of prediction errors involves temporal-frontal activation.

According to the predictive coding model of perception, the brain constantly generates predictions of the upcoming sensory inputs. Perception is realised through a hierarchical generative model which aims at minimising the discrepancy between predictions and the incoming sensory inputs (i.e.

Dynamics of brain activation during learning of syllable-symbol paired associations.

Initial stages of reading acquisition require the learning of letter and speech sound combinations. While the long-term effects of audio-visual learning are rather well studied, relatively little is known about the short-term learning effects at the brain level. Here we examined the cortical dynamics of short-term learning using magnetoencephalography (MEG) and electroencephalography (EEG) in two experiments that respectively addressed active and passive learning of the association between shown symbols and heard syllables.

Prior Precision Modulates the Minimization of Auditory Prediction Error.

The predictive coding model of perception proposes that successful representation of the perceptual world depends upon canceling out the discrepancy between prediction and sensory input (i.e., prediction error).

Human susceptibility to social influence and its neural correlates are related to perceived vulnerability to extrinsic morbidity risks.

Humans considerably vary in the degree to which they rely on their peers to make decisions. Why? Theoretical models predict that environmental risks shift the cost-benefit trade-off associated with the exploitation of others' behaviours (public information), yet this idea has received little empirical support. Using computational analyses of behaviour and multivariate decoding of electroencephalographic activity, we test the hypothesis that perceived vulnerability to extrinsic morbidity risks impacts susceptibility to social influence, and investigate whether and how this covariation is reflected in the brain.

The processing of mispredicted and unpredicted sensory inputs interact differently with attention.

Prediction and attention are fundamental brain functions in the service of perception. Interestingly, previous investigations found prediction effects independent of attention in some cases but attention-dependent in other cases. The discrepancy might be related to whether the prediction effect was revealed by comparing mispredicted event (where there is incorrect prediction) or unpredicted event (where there is no precise prediction) against predicted event, which are associated with different precision-weighted prediction error.

Corrigendum: Both attention and prediction are necessary for adaptive neuronal tuning in sensory processing.

[This corrects the article on p. 152 in vol. 8, PMID: 24723871.

Temporal expectancies driven by self- and externally generated rhythms.

The dynamic attending theory proposes that rhythms entrain periodic fluctuations of attention which modulate the gain of sensory input. However, temporal expectancies can also be driven by the mere passage of time (foreperiod effect). It is currently unknown how these two types of temporal expectancy relate to each other, i.

Category-specific features and valence in action-effect prediction: An EEG study.

Despite extensive research on action-effect anticipation, little attention has been paid to the anticipation of different attributes of an event. An action-effect is not only a sensory event; it is often also an event of emotional value which can be pleasant or aversive. This latter attribute of action-effect prediction is similar to anticipation of reward versus punishment.

The impact of subliminal effect images in voluntary vs. stimulus-driven actions.

According to the ideomotor theory, actions are represented in terms of their sensory effects. In the current study we tested whether subliminal effect images influence action control (1) at early and/or late preparatory stages of (2) voluntary actions or stimulus-driven actions (3) with or without Stimulus-Response (S-R) compatibility. In Experiment 1, participants were presented at random with 50% of S-R compatible stimulus-driven action trials and 50% of voluntary action trials.

The auditory N1 suppression rebounds as prediction persists over time.

The predictive coding model of perception proposes that neuronal responses reflect prediction errors. Repeated as well as predicted stimuli trigger suppressed neuronal responses because they are associated with reduced prediction errors. However, many predictable events in our environment are not isolated but sequential, yet there is little empirical evidence documenting how suppressed neuronal responses reflecting reduced prediction errors change in the course of a predictable sequence of events.

Distinctive Representation of Mispredicted and Unpredicted Prediction Errors in Human Electroencephalography.

The predictive coding model of perception proposes that neuronal responses are modulated by the amount of sensory input that the internal prediction cannot account for (i.e., prediction error).

Optimistic, pessimistic, realistic: Event-related potential evidence for how depressive symptoms influences expectation formation in the Human brain.

Recent research suggested a link between the prediction mechanism and depressive symptoms. While healthy people tend to maintain unrealistic optimism in the face of reality challenging their beliefs, depressed people show systematic pessimism. However, it remains unclear at which stage these individual differences in optimism/pessimism arise in the brain.

Repetition priming results in sensitivity attenuation.

Repetition priming refers to the change in the ability to perform a task on a stimulus as a consequence of a former encounter with that very same item. Usually, repetition results in faster and more accurate performance. In the present study, we used a contrast discrimination protocol to assess perceptual sensitivity and response bias of Gabor gratings that are either repeated (same orientation) or alternated (different orientation).

Auditory event-related potentials over medial frontal electrodes express both negative and positive prediction errors.

While the neuronal activation in the medial frontal cortex is thought to reflect higher-order evaluation processes of reward prediction errors when a reward deviates from our expectation, there is increasing evidence that the medial frontal activity might express prediction errors in general. However, given that several studies examined the medial frontal event-related potentials (ERPs) by comparing signals triggered by different stimuli and different anticipations, it remains an open question whether the medial frontal signals are sensitive to the valence of prediction errors. Here we orthogonally manipulated expectation magnitude (i.

Repetition suppression comprises both attention-independent and attention-dependent processes.

Repetition suppression, a robust phenomenon of reduction in neural responses to stimulus repetition, is suggested to consist of a combination of bottom-up adaptation and top-down prediction effects. However, there is little consensus on how repetition suppression is related to attention in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies. It is probably because fMRI integrates neural activity related to adaptation and prediction effects, which are respectively attention-independent and attention-dependent.

Both attention and prediction are necessary for adaptive neuronal tuning in sensory processing.

The brain as a proactive system processes sensory information under the top-down influence of attention and prediction. However, the relation between attention and prediction remains undetermined given the conflation of these two mechanisms in the literature. To evaluate whether attention and prediction are dependent of each other, and if so, how these two top-down mechanisms may interact in sensory processing, we orthogonally manipulated attention and prediction in a target detection task.