High-level visual prediction errors in early visual cortex

This repository contains all data and code necessary to replicate the results reported in: Richter, Kietzmann & de Lange (PLOS Biology, 2024). High-level visual prediction errors in early visual cortex.

---

ABSTRACT:
Perception is shaped by both incoming sensory input and expectations derived from our prior knowledge. Numerous studies have shown stronger neural activity for surprising inputs, suggestive of predictive processing. However, it is largely unclear what predictions are made across the cortical hierarchy, and therefore what kind of surprise drives this upregulation of activity. Here we leveraged fMRI in human volunteers and deep neural network models to arbitrate between two hypotheses: prediction errors may signal a local mismatch between input and expectation at each level of the cortical hierarchy, or prediction errors may be computed at higher levels and the resulting surprise signal is broadcast to earlier areas in the cortical hierarchy. Our results align with the latter hypothesis. Prediction errors in both low- and high-level visual cortex responded to high-level, but not low-level, visual surprise. This scaling with high-level surprise in early visual cortex strongly diverged from feedforward tuning. Combined, our results suggest that high-level predictions constrain sensory processing in earlier areas, thereby aiding perceptual inference.

---

Please see: README_INSTRUCTIONS.txt for information on how to use this repository.