Macaque monkeys perceive the flash lag illusion

Transmission of neural signals in the brain takes time due to the slow biological mechanisms that mediate it. During such delays, the position of moving objects can change substantially. The brain could use statistical regularities in the natural world to compensate neural delays and represent moving stimuli closer to real time. This possibility has been explored in the context of the flash lag illusion, where a briefly flashed stimulus in alignment with a moving one appears to lag behind the moving stimulus. Despite numerous psychophysical studies, the neural mechanisms underlying the flash lag illusion remain poorly understood, partly because it has never been studied electrophysiologically in behaving animals. Macaques are a prime model for such studies, but it is unknown if they perceive the illusion. By training monkeys to report their percepts unbiased by reward, we show that they indeed perceive the illusion qualitatively similar to humans. Importantly, the magnitude of the illus...

大脑中神经信号的传递需要时间，这是由介导该过程的缓慢生物机制所致。在这种延迟期间，运动物体的位置可能发生显著变化。大脑可利用自然界中的统计规律来补偿神经延迟，并使运动刺激的表征更接近实时。这一可能性已在闪光滞后错觉（flash lag illusion）的研究背景下得到探索：当一个短暂闪烁的刺激与运动刺激对齐时，前者看起来会滞后于后者。尽管已有大量心理物理学研究，但闪光滞后错觉背后的神经机制仍知之甚少，部分原因在于从未在行为动物中对其进行过电生理学研究。猕猴是这类研究的理想模型，但目前尚不清楚它们是否能感知该错觉。通过训练猴子报告其不受奖励影响的知觉体验，我们发现它们确实能感知该错觉，且在定性上与人类相似。重要的是，该错觉的程度……