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Poster Session C: Friday, August 15, 2:00 – 5:00 pm, de Brug & E‑Hall

How the Brain Automatically Encodes Global Predictability: Temporal Generalization Evidence for Stable Representations

Yun-Yi Qi¹, Cheng Luo¹, Ning Ma, Nai Ding²; ¹Zhejiang Lab, ²Zhejiang University

Presenter: Yun-Yi Qi

The brain can automatically track global information, yet the underlying mechanisms remain under debate. Although global processing, particularly of high-level structural regularities, is commonly associated with late components such as the N400, its temporal dynamics are not well understood. In this study, we employed a hierarchical roving oddball paradigm to manipulate global predictability while controlling for physical features and overall stimulus probability. EEG signals were collected while participants were passively presented with auditory inputs. ERP analysis revealed canonical MMN and P300 components. To investigate the temporal evolution of global encoding, we trained a time-resolved linear discriminant analysis to decode global predictability across time points. The resulting temporal generalization matrix showed significant cross-temporal decoding from 50 to 500 ms post-stimulus, indicating a temporally stable neural representation of global predictability. These findings suggest that the brain encodes global regularities in a sustained and temporally generalized manner, even in the absence of attention.

Topic Area: Predictive Processing & Cognitive Control

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