Neural repetition suppression reflects fulfilled perceptual expectations

Top Cited Papers
Open Access
Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Repetition suppression, the reduction in neural activity with repeated stimuli, is usually thought to be a result of automatic sensory processes. This study instead finds that this reduction results from high stimulus predictability, a more 'top-down' process. Stimulus-evoked neural activity is attenuated on stimulus repetition (repetition suppression), a phenomenon that is attributed to largely automatic processes in sensory neurons. By manipulating the likelihood of stimulus repetition, we found that repetition suppression in the human brain was reduced when stimulus repetitions were improbable (and thus, unexpected). Our data suggest that repetition suppression reflects a relative reduction in top-down perceptual 'prediction error' when processing an expected, compared with an unexpected, stimulus.