แนวคิดหลัก
Presentation of a stimulus within a learned sequence triggers the internal representation of the immediately following stimulus at its expected moment in time, even when the anticipated stimulus is omitted.
บทคัดย่อ
The study investigated the neural dynamics of predicting the future using high-temporal-resolution electroencephalography (EEG). Participants were exposed to a fixed sequence of dots appearing at four unique spatial positions. After learning the sequence, partial sequences with only a single dot presented were randomly intermixed with full sequences.
Using multivariate pattern analyses, the researchers were able to decode the spatial position of the expected, yet omitted, dots within the partial sequences at their anticipated moment in time. This suggests that the presentation of a stimulus triggers the internal representation of the immediately following stimulus in the sequence, even when that stimulus is not physically present.
The findings highlight the brain's ability to dynamically prioritize and internally generate representations for anticipated locations in a future-oriented manner, even in the absence of sensory inputs. The decoding of expected but absent events was observed in both early sensory/perceptual and later post-perceptual processes, indicating that both types of processes underpin the activation of internal representations for anticipated stimuli.
The study also compared decoding performance between pattern estimator blocks with short and long inter-stimulus intervals (ISIs). The long-ISI pattern estimator demonstrated superior overall classification, with subsequent peaks in decoding occurring at later time points compared to the short-ISI pattern estimator. This suggests that longer ISIs may provide a better model of stimulus-specific representations, especially when decoding low-level features like positions.
สถิติ
The study did not report any specific metrics or figures to support the key logics. The analyses focused on decoding performance over time rather than reporting numerical values.
คำพูด
"Presentation of a stimulus within a learned sequence triggers the internal representation of the immediately following stimulus at its expected moment in time, even when the anticipated stimulus is omitted."
"The findings highlight the brain's ability to dynamically prioritize and internally generate representations for anticipated locations in a future-oriented manner, even in the absence of sensory inputs."