Predicting Affective Information – An Evaluation of Repetition Suppression Effects

Abstract

Both theoretical proposals and empirical studies suggest that the brain interprets sensory input based on expectations to mitigate computational burden. However, as social beings, much of sensory input is affectively loaded – e.g., the smile of a partner, the critical voice of a boss, or the welcoming gesture of a friend. Given that affective information is highly complex and often ambiguous, building up expectations of upcoming affective sensory input may greatly contribute to its rapid and efficient processing. This review points to the role of affective information in the context of the ‘predictive brain’. It particularly focuses on repetition suppression (RS) effects that have recently been linked to prediction processes. The findings are interpreted as evidence for more pronounced prediction processes with affective material. Importantly, it is argued that bottom-up attention inflates the neural RS effect, and because affective stimuli tend to attract more bottom-up attention, it thereby particularly overshadows the magnitude of RS effects for this information. Finally, anxiety disorders, such as social phobia, are briefly discussed as manifestations of modulations in affective prediction.

Auditory attention enhances processing of positive and negative words in inferior and superior prefrontal cortex

“…shown to be less pronounced for emotional stimuli (e.g., Trapp & Kotz, 2016), which may have contributed to emotion effects in the active runs.…”

A link between age, affect, and predictions?

“…For example, schizophrenia has been re-explained by deviant prediction error signaling (Horga et al 2014 ; Umbricht & Krljes 2005 ). Anxiety is an emotion that is inherently linked to the future, i.e., by expecting aversive things to happen, and has therefore consequently been associated with biased prediction processes (Grupe & Nitschke 2013 ; Trapp & Kotz 2016 ). Autism has been linked to aberrant predictive processes, in that these individuals perceive the world based on fewer expectations, thus are “flooded” with raw data from bottom-up, or handle prediction errors less flexibly (Pellicano & Burr 2012 ; van de Cruys et al, 2014 ).…”

Empathy: The Role of Expectations

“…First evidence for this idea was provided by Summerfield, Trittschuh, Monti, Mesulam, and Egner (2008) who found that the RS effect was modulated by the likelihood of a repetition, which would not occur if the effect is entirely driven by (low-level) neural fatigue or adaptation effects. There is evidence that RS also changes as a function of the stimulus’ valence (for a review see Trapp & Kotz, 2016). Expectation effects of RS are usually automatic and participants report no awareness of repetition likelihoods (Grotheer & Kovács, 2016).…”