Effect of repetition on the behavioral and neuronal responses to ambiguous Necker cube images

Abstract

A repeated presentation of an item facilitates its subsequent detection or identification, a phenomenon of priming. Priming may involve different types of memory and attention and affects neural activity in various brain regions. Here we instructed participants to report on the orientation of repeatedly presented Necker cubes with high (HA) and low (LA) ambiguity. Manipulating the contrast of internal edges, we varied the ambiguity and orientation of the cube. We tested how both the repeated orientation (referred to as a stimulus factor) and the repeated ambiguity (referred to as a top-down factor) modulated neuronal and behavioral response. On the behavioral level, we observed higher speed and correctness of the response to the HA stimulus following the HA stimulus and a faster response to the right-oriented LA stimulus following the right-oriented stimulus. On the neuronal level, the prestimulus theta-band power grew for the repeated HA stimulus, indicating activation of the neural networks related to attention and uncertainty processing. The repeated HA stimulus enhanced hippocampal activation after stimulus onset. The right-oriented LA stimulus following the right-oriented stimulus enhanced activity in the precuneus and the left frontal gyri before the behavioral response. During the repeated HA stimulus processing, enhanced hippocampal activation may evidence retrieving information to disambiguate the stimulus and define its orientation. Increased activation of the precuneus and the left prefrontal cortex before responding to the right-oriented LA stimulus following the right-oriented stimulus may indicate a match between their orientations. Finally, we observed increased hippocampal activation after responding to the stimuli, reflecting the encoding stimulus features in memory. In line with the large body of works relating the hippocampal activity with episodic memory, we suppose that this type of memory may subserve the priming effect during the repeated presentation of ambiguous images.

Possibility of Using Quantitative Assessment with the Cube Copying Test for Evaluation of Visuo-spatial Function in Patients with Alzheimer’s Disease

“…31) However, the mechanistic details of symptoms such as wandering and becoming lost are not yet known. Maksimenko et al 32) reported that the precuneus and parahippocampal gyrus were active while deciding the orientation of the Necker cube under a priming condition. Therefore, in AD, low scores on the CCT and impaired route finding may have the same neural basis.…”

Monitoring the Cortical Activity of Children and Adults during Cognitive Task Completion

“…In the pairwise comparison, critical a -level was set to 0.05, while in the cluster-level statistics, it was set to 0.025, which corresponded to a 0.05 false alarm rate in a two-sided test. Finally, the minimal number of the elements in the cluster was set to 2, and the number of permutations was equal to 2000 [ 35 , 36 ]. This number of permutations was sufficient since it was empirically found that their increase does not change the results obtained for the considered problem.…”

Sensor-Level Wavelet Analysis Reveals EEG Biomarkers of Perceptual Decision-Making

“…The reaction time (group mean) was 0.84 s for LA and 1.09 s for HA stimuli (Figure 2C). This simplification is based on our previous works on the Necker cube images [7,25]. It enables revealing effects of ambiguity and provides a sufficient number of trials to minimize additional effects of orientation, a bias of the presentation moment, and the previously presented stimulus [7].…”

“…This simplification is based on our previous works on the Necker cube images [7,25]. It enables revealing effects of ambiguity and provides a sufficient number of trials to minimize additional effects of orientation, a bias of the presentation moment, and the previously presented stimulus [7]. Simultaneously, according to Brunye et al, very different perceptual and cognitive processes may underlie decision making at low, medium, and high uncertainty levels [15].…”

“…Furthermore, they rely on personal experience and memory [6]. Thus, subjects better respond to the sensory stimuli if they saw them before and increase responses to the repeatedly presented stimuli [7]. External factors reflect the quality of the sensory evidence.…”