scholarly journals Dynamic Prediction During Perception of Everyday Events

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle L. Eisenberg ◽  
Jeffrey M. Zacks ◽  
Shaney Flores

AbstractThe ability to predict what is going to happen in the near future is integral for daily functioning. Previous research suggests that predictability varies over time, with increases in prediction error at those moments that people perceive as boundaries between meaningful events. These moments also tend to be points of rapid change in the environment. Eye tracking provides a method for continuous measurement of prediction as participants watch a movie of an actor performing a series of actions. In two studies, we used eye tracking to study the time course of prediction around event boundaries. In both studies, viewers looked at objects that were about to be touched by the actor shortly before the objects were contacted, demonstrating predictive looking. However, this behavior was modulated by event boundaries: looks to to-be-contacted objects near event boundaries were less likely to be early and more likely to be late, compared to looks to objects contacted within events. This result is consistent with theories proposing that event segmentation results from transient increases in prediction error.Significance StatementThe ability to predict what will happen in the near future is integral for adaptive functioning, and although there has been extensive research on predictive processing, the dynamics of prediction at the second by second level during the perception of naturalistic activity has never been explored. The current studies therefore describe results from a novel task, the Predictive Looking at Action Task (PLAT) that can be used to investigate the dynamics of predictive processing. Demonstrating the utility of this task to investigate predictive processing, this task was applied to study the predictions made by Event Segmentation Theory, which suggests that people experience event boundaries at times of change and unpredictability in the environment. The results of these studies are of interest to communities investigating the dynamic comprehension and segmentation of naturalistic events and to communities studying visual perception of naturalistic activity.

2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (6) ◽  
pp. 855-873 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diana Omigie ◽  
Marcus Pearce ◽  
Katia Lehongre ◽  
Dominique Hasboun ◽  
Vincent Navarro ◽  
...  

Prediction is held to be a fundamental process underpinning perception, action, and cognition. To examine the time course of prediction error signaling, we recorded intracranial EEG activity from nine presurgical epileptic patients while they listened to melodies whose information theoretical predictability had been characterized using a computational model. We examined oscillatory activity in the superior temporal gyrus (STG), the middle temporal gyrus (MTG), and the pars orbitalis of the inferior frontal gyrus, lateral cortical areas previously implicated in auditory predictive processing. We also examined activity in anterior cingulate gyrus (ACG), insula, and amygdala to determine whether signatures of prediction error signaling may also be observable in these subcortical areas. Our results demonstrate that the information content (a measure of unexpectedness) of musical notes modulates the amplitude of low-frequency oscillatory activity (theta to beta power) in bilateral STG and right MTG from within 100 and 200 msec of note onset, respectively. Our results also show this cortical activity to be accompanied by low-frequency oscillatory modulation in ACG and insula—areas previously associated with mediating physiological arousal. Finally, we showed that modulation of low-frequency activity is followed by that of high-frequency (gamma) power from approximately 200 msec in the STG, between 300 and 400 msec in the left insula, and between 400 and 500 msec in the ACG. We discuss these results with respect to models of neural processing that emphasize gamma activity as an index of prediction error signaling and highlight the usefulness of musical stimuli in revealing the wide-reaching neural consequences of predictive processing.


PLoS Biology ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (12) ◽  
pp. e3001019
Author(s):  
Lorena Casado-Román ◽  
Guillermo V. Carbajal ◽  
David Pérez-González ◽  
Manuel S. Malmierca

The mismatch negativity (MMN) is a key biomarker of automatic deviance detection thought to emerge from 2 cortical sources. First, the auditory cortex (AC) encodes spectral regularities and reports frequency-specific deviances. Then, more abstract representations in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) allow to detect contextual changes of potential behavioral relevance. However, the precise location and time asynchronies between neuronal correlates underlying this frontotemporal network remain unclear and elusive. Our study presented auditory oddball paradigms along with “no-repetition” controls to record mismatch responses in neuronal spiking activity and local field potentials at the rat medial PFC. Whereas mismatch responses in the auditory system are mainly induced by stimulus-dependent effects, we found that auditory responsiveness in the PFC was driven by unpredictability, yielding context-dependent, comparatively delayed, more robust and longer-lasting mismatch responses mostly comprised of prediction error signaling activity. This characteristically different composition discarded that mismatch responses in the PFC could be simply inherited or amplified downstream from the auditory system. Conversely, it is more plausible for the PFC to exert top-down influences on the AC, since the PFC exhibited flexible and potent predictive processing, capable of suppressing redundant input more efficiently than the AC. Remarkably, the time course of the mismatch responses we observed in the spiking activity and local field potentials of the AC and the PFC combined coincided with the time course of the large-scale MMN-like signals reported in the rat brain, thereby linking the microscopic, mesoscopic, and macroscopic levels of automatic deviance detection.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorena Casado-Román ◽  
Guillermo V. Carbajal ◽  
David Pérez-González ◽  
Manuel S. Malmierca

AbstractThe mismatch negativity (MMN) is a key biomarker of automatic deviance detection thought to emerge from two cortical sources. First, the auditory cortex (AC) encodes spectral regularities and reports frequency-specific deviances. Then, more abstract representations in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) allow to detect contextual changes of potential behavioral relevance. However, the precise location and time asynchronies between neuronal correlates underlying this fronto-temporal network remain unclear and elusive. Our study presented auditory oddball paradigms along with ‘no-repetition’ controls to record mismatch responses in neuronal spiking activity and local field potentials at the rat medial PFC. Whereas mismatch responses in the auditory system are mainly induced by stimulus-dependent effects, we found that auditory responsiveness in the PFC was driven by unpredictability, yielding context-dependent, comparatively delayed, more robust and longer-lasting mismatch responses mostly comprised of prediction error signaling activity. This characteristically different composition discarded that mismatch responses in the PFC could be simply inherited or amplified downstream from the auditory system. Conversely, it is more plausible for the PFC to exert top-down influences on the AC, since the PFC exhibited flexible and potent predictive processing, capable of suppressing redundant input more efficiently than the AC. Remarkably, the time course of the mismatch responses we observed in the spiking activity and local field potentials of the AC and the PFC combined coincided with the time course of the large-scale MMN-like signals reported in the rat brain, thereby linking the microscopic, mesoscopic and macroscopic levels of automatic deviance detection.


2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 141
Author(s):  
Rana Sağıroğlu

Margaret Atwood, one of the most spectacular authors of postmodern movement, achieved to unite debatable and in demand critical points of 21st century such as science fiction, postmodernism and ecocriticism in the novel The Year of The Flood written in 2009. The novel could be regarded as an ecocritical manifesto and a dystopic mirror against today’s degenerated world, tending to a superficial base to keep the already order in use, by moving away from the fundamental solution of all humanity: nature. Although Atwood does not want her works to be called science fiction, it is obvious that science fiction plays an introductory role and gives the novel a ground explaining all ‘why’ questions of the novel. However, Atwood is not unjust while claiming that her works are not science fiction because of the inevitable rapid change of 21st century world becoming addicted to technology, especially Internet. It is easily observed by the reader that what she fictionalises throughout the novel is quite close to possibility, and the world may witness in the near future what she creates in the novel as science fiction. Additionally, postmodernism serves to the novel as the answerer of ‘how’ questions: How the world embraces pluralities, how heterogeneous social order is needed, and how impossible to run the world by dichotomies of patriarchal social order anymore. And lastly, ecocriticism gives the answers of ‘why’ questions of the novel: Why humanity is in chaos, why humanity has organized the world according to its own needs as if there were no living creatures apart from humanity. Therefore, The Year of The Flood meets the reader as a compact embodiment of science fiction, postmodernism and ecocriticism not only with its theme, but also with its narrative techniques.


Author(s):  
Michiel Van Elk ◽  
Harold Bekkering

We characterize theories of conceptual representation as embodied, disembodied, or hybrid according to their stance on a number of different dimensions: the nature of concepts, the relation between language and concepts, the function of concepts, the acquisition of concepts, the representation of concepts, and the role of context. We propose to extend an embodied view of concepts, by taking into account the importance of multimodal associations and predictive processing. We argue that concepts are dynamically acquired and updated, based on recurrent processing of prediction error signals in a hierarchically structured network. Concepts are thus used as prior models to generate multimodal expectations, thereby reducing surprise and enabling greater precision in the perception of exemplars. This view places embodied theories of concepts in a novel predictive processing framework, by highlighting the importance of concepts for prediction, learning and shaping categories on the basis of prediction errors.


Author(s):  
A. Greenhouse-Tucknott ◽  
J. B. Butterworth ◽  
J. G. Wrightson ◽  
N. J. Smeeton ◽  
H. D. Critchley ◽  
...  

AbstractFatigue is a common experience in both health and disease. Yet, pathological (i.e., prolonged or chronic) and transient (i.e., exertional) fatigue symptoms are traditionally considered distinct, compounding a separation between interested research fields within the study of fatigue. Within the clinical neurosciences, nascent frameworks position pathological fatigue as a product of inference derived through hierarchical predictive processing. The metacognitive theory of dyshomeostasis (Stephan et al., 2016) states that pathological fatigue emerges from the metacognitive mechanism in which the detection of persistent mismatches between prior interoceptive predictions and ascending sensory evidence (i.e., prediction error) signals low evidence for internal generative models, which undermine an agent’s feeling of mastery over the body and is thus experienced phenomenologically as fatigue. Although acute, transient subjective symptoms of exertional fatigue have also been associated with increasing interoceptive prediction error, the dynamic computations that underlie its development have not been clearly defined. Here, drawing on the metacognitive theory of dyshomeostasis, we extend this account to offer an explicit description of the development of fatigue during extended periods of (physical) exertion. Accordingly, it is proposed that a loss of certainty or confidence in control predictions in response to persistent detection of prediction error features as a common foundation for the conscious experience of both pathological and nonpathological fatigue.


2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (10) ◽  
pp. 1148-1163
Author(s):  
Merel Maslowski ◽  
Antje S. Meyer ◽  
Hans Rutger Bosker

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