Abstract rules drive adaptation in the subcortical sensory pathway

The subcortical sensory pathways are the fundamental channels for mapping the outside world to our minds. Sensory pathways efficiently transmit information by adapting neural responses to the local statistics of the sensory input. The long-standing mechanistic explanation for this adaptive behaviour...

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Main Authors: Alejandro Tabas, Glad Mihai, Stefan Kiebel, Robert Trampel, Katharina von Kriegstein
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: eLife Sciences Publications Ltd 2020-12-01
Series:eLife
Subjects:
Online Access:https://elifesciences.org/articles/64501
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author Alejandro Tabas
Glad Mihai
Stefan Kiebel
Robert Trampel
Katharina von Kriegstein
author_facet Alejandro Tabas
Glad Mihai
Stefan Kiebel
Robert Trampel
Katharina von Kriegstein
author_sort Alejandro Tabas
collection DOAJ
description The subcortical sensory pathways are the fundamental channels for mapping the outside world to our minds. Sensory pathways efficiently transmit information by adapting neural responses to the local statistics of the sensory input. The long-standing mechanistic explanation for this adaptive behaviour is that neural activity decreases with increasing regularities in the local statistics of the stimuli. An alternative account is that neural coding is directly driven by expectations of the sensory input. Here, we used abstract rules to manipulate expectations independently of local stimulus statistics. The ultra-high-field functional-MRI data show that abstract expectations can drive the response amplitude to tones in the human auditory pathway. These results provide first unambiguous evidence of abstract processing in a subcortical sensory pathway. They indicate that the neural representation of the outside world is altered by our prior beliefs even at initial points of the processing hierarchy.
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spelling doaj.art-1e92d919a19a4422b9e38ad123a134732022-12-22T02:03:16ZengeLife Sciences Publications LtdeLife2050-084X2020-12-01910.7554/eLife.64501Abstract rules drive adaptation in the subcortical sensory pathwayAlejandro Tabas0https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8643-1543Glad Mihai1Stefan Kiebel2https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5052-1117Robert Trampel3Katharina von Kriegstein4https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7989-5860Faculty of Psychology, Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden, Germany; Max Planck Research Group Neural Mechanism of Human Communication, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, GermanyFaculty of Psychology, Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden, Germany; Max Planck Research Group Neural Mechanism of Human Communication, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, GermanyFaculty of Psychology, Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden, Germany; Centre for Tactile Internet with Human-in-the-Loop (CeTI), Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden, GermanyDepartment of Neurophysics, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, GermanyFaculty of Psychology, Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden, Germany; Max Planck Research Group Neural Mechanism of Human Communication, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, GermanyThe subcortical sensory pathways are the fundamental channels for mapping the outside world to our minds. Sensory pathways efficiently transmit information by adapting neural responses to the local statistics of the sensory input. The long-standing mechanistic explanation for this adaptive behaviour is that neural activity decreases with increasing regularities in the local statistics of the stimuli. An alternative account is that neural coding is directly driven by expectations of the sensory input. Here, we used abstract rules to manipulate expectations independently of local stimulus statistics. The ultra-high-field functional-MRI data show that abstract expectations can drive the response amplitude to tones in the human auditory pathway. These results provide first unambiguous evidence of abstract processing in a subcortical sensory pathway. They indicate that the neural representation of the outside world is altered by our prior beliefs even at initial points of the processing hierarchy.https://elifesciences.org/articles/64501predictive codingthalamusMGBICSSAsensory processing
spellingShingle Alejandro Tabas
Glad Mihai
Stefan Kiebel
Robert Trampel
Katharina von Kriegstein
Abstract rules drive adaptation in the subcortical sensory pathway
eLife
predictive coding
thalamus
MGB
IC
SSA
sensory processing
title Abstract rules drive adaptation in the subcortical sensory pathway
title_full Abstract rules drive adaptation in the subcortical sensory pathway
title_fullStr Abstract rules drive adaptation in the subcortical sensory pathway
title_full_unstemmed Abstract rules drive adaptation in the subcortical sensory pathway
title_short Abstract rules drive adaptation in the subcortical sensory pathway
title_sort abstract rules drive adaptation in the subcortical sensory pathway
topic predictive coding
thalamus
MGB
IC
SSA
sensory processing
url https://elifesciences.org/articles/64501
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