Perceptual Expectations do not Modulate Image Repetition Effects as Measured by Event-Related Potentials

Abstract

2 Highlights-ERP face image repetition effects were apparent between 99-800ms from stimulus onset -Expectations of stimulus image properties did not modulate face repetition effects -The predictability of unrepeated stimuli influenced repetition effect magnitudes . CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license not peer-reviewed) is the author/funder. It is made available under a The copyright holder for this preprint (which was . http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/132621 doi: bioRxiv preprint first posted online 3 AbstractRepeated stimulus presentation leads to complex changes in cortical neuron response properties, commonly known as repetition suppression or stimulus-specific adaptation. Circuit-based models of repetition suppression provide a framework for investigating patterns of repetition effects that propagate through cortical hierarchies.To further develop such models it is critical to determine whether (and if so, when) repetition effects are modulated by top-down influences, such as those related to perceptual expectation. We investigated this by presenting pairs of repeated and alternating face images, and orthogonally manipulating expectations regarding the likelihood of stimulus repetition. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from n=39 healthy adults, to map the spatiotemporal progression of stimulus repetition and expectation effects, and interactions between these factors, using mass univariate analyses. We also tested whether the ability to predict unrepeated (compared to repeated) face identities could influence the magnitude of observed repetition effects, by presenting separate blocks with predictable and unpredictable alternating faces. Multiple repetition and expectation effects were identified between 99-800ms from stimulus onset, which did not statistically interact at any point.Repetition effects in blocks with predictable alternating faces were smaller than in unpredictable alternating face blocks between 117-179ms and 506-652ms, and larger between 246-428ms. ERP repetition effects appear not to be modulated by perceptual expectations, supporting separate mechanisms for repetition and expectation suppression. However, previous studies that aimed to test for repetition effects, in which the repeated (but not unrepeated) stimulus was predictable, are likely to have conflated repetition and stimulus predictability effects.

Immediate stimulus repetition abolishes stimulus expectation and surprise effects in fast periodic visual oddball designs

“…Moreover, expectation violations alone do not appear to generate measurable EEG responses when the surprising stimulus was a repetition of an image seen immediately beforehand. Our results show that repetition suppression can reduce perceptual expectation effects on stimulus-evoked responses in oddball designs, contrary to the view that stimulus expectations modulate repetition suppression (Summerfield et al, 2008; for discussion see Grotheer & Kovacs, 2016;Feuerriegel et al, 2018).…”

“…The later part of the response (~330ms in Figure 7B) appears to instead be generated from bilateral posterior sources. Our observations are congruent with expectation effects found over frontal electrodes in EEG (Feuerriegel et al, 2018;Hall et al, in press), and in BOLD signals in frontal areas such as inferior frontal and middle frontal gyri (Grotheer & Kovacs, 2015;Amado et al, 2016) and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (den Ouden et al, 2009;Rahnev et al, 2011), as well as in ventral temporal regions when presenting face stimuli (e.g., Egner et al, 2010;Grotheer & Kovacs, 2015). Our results also provide further evidence that expectation effects underlying VMRs are not restricted to visual areas, as is commonly assumed in existing studies of visual mismatch responses.…”

“…We identified noisy channels by visual inspection (mean noisy channels by participant 0.6, median 0, range 0-3) and marked these for exclusion from average referencing and independent components analysis (ICA). We rereferenced the data to the average of the 128 scalp channels, and removed one extra channel (FCz) to correct for the rank deficiency caused by average referencing (as done by Feuerriegel et al, 2018). We processed a copy of this dataset in the same way, but additionally applied a 1 Hz high-pass filter (EEGLab Basic FIR Filter New, filter settings as above) to improve stationarity for the ICA.…”

“…Given that effects of stimulus repetition, expectation/surprise, and stimulus predictability have all been found on visual stimulus evoked ERPs within the time range of the VMR (Feuerriegel et al, 2018), it is unclear how each mechanism may have contributed to effects observed when using comparisons with equiprobable sequences. To tease these separate aspects apart, a design that independently manipulates stimulus repetition and expectation without a stimulus predictability-related confound is required, but is missing from the literature on the VMR thus far.…”

“…In both experiments, we presented face images at a presentation rate of exactly 6 Hz, with an oddball face stimulus presented as every 7 th stimulus. Faces are an ideal stimulus type for our purposes here, since they are associated with robust face identity repetition and expectation effects (Henson, 2016;Grotheer and Kovacs, 2014;Summerfield et al, 2018;Feuerriegel et al, 2018). Moreover, in FPVS oddball designs, faces elicit a complex EEG response to, for example, changes of identity or facial expression (e.g., Dzhelyova & Rossion, 2014;Dzhelyova et al, 2017, respectively).…”