Floris de Lange - Shaping perception by expectation and attention

Perception is not simply a passive process of accumulation of sensory evidence, but it is strongly shaped by internal brain states, which incorporate our goals, attention, expectations, and knowledge about the world. In my talk, I will focus on how expectation shapes perception, in terms of brain and behavior. I will contrast two views of how expectation influences perception: by changing the weight of sensory evidence on a perceptual decision (cf. “taking the statements of the suspect with a grain of salt”), or by changing the evidence itself (cf. “planting evidence on the suspect”).

I will highlight recent neuroimaging data (MEG and fMRI) and multivariate methods (MVPA) that show how stimulus expectations reduce neural activity in early sensory cortex, but boost the amount of information that can be “read out” from these areas. In conclusion, I will argue that the brain both “plants” and “weights” sensory evidence during perceptual decision-making.

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