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Poster Session B: Wednesday, August 13, 1:00 – 4:00 pm, de Brug & E‑Hall

Dissociable Dynamic Effects of Expectation During Statistical Learning Across Cortical Layers

Hannah H McDermott¹, Mahdi Enan¹, Federico de Martino, Ryszard Auksztulewicz¹; ¹Maastricht University

Presenter: Hannah H McDermott

The brain seemingly generates internal predictions, to optimise behaviour. Predictive processing has been repeatedly demonstrated in non-invasive studies on human volunteers and in animal models. One commonly reported phenomenon is expectation suppression (ES) or the suppression of neural activity in response to expected stimuli. Our recent EEG study yielded direct evidence that ES is expressed as two opposing mechanisms, amounting to sharpening vs. dampening of neural activity by stimulus expectation, albeit at different time points both within and across trials. In this high-field neuroimaging study, we test if these dissociable dynamics of expectation effects can be explained in the context of hierarchical learning mechanisms. Healthy volunteers (N=15) completed an associative learning task with paired visual and auditory stimuli. Univariate analyses examined region- and layer-specific activity for expected vs. unexpected sounds. General Linear Model (GLM) analyses of activation across conditions revealed differences between valid and invalid trials across the auditory cortex and occipital cortex.

Topic Area: Predictive Processing & Cognitive Control

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