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Neural repetition suppression reflects fulfilled perceptual expectations

Nature Neuroscience volume 11, pages 1004–1006 (2008)Cite this article

Abstract

Stimulus-evoked neural activity is attenuated on stimulus repetition (repetition suppression), a phenomenon that is attributed to largely automatic processes in sensory neurons. By manipulating the likelihood of stimulus repetition, we found that repetition suppression in the human brain was reduced when stimulus repetitions were improbable (and thus, unexpected). Our data suggest that repetition suppression reflects a relative reduction in top-down perceptual 'prediction error' when processing an expected, compared with an unexpected, stimulus.

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Figure 1: Main experiment: protocol and results.
Figure 2: Control experiment protocol and results.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to E. Koechlin and S. Kouider for helpful comments on an earlier version of this manuscript. This work was supported in part by a grant from the US National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NS30863, M.-M.M.).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. INSERM U742, Université Pierre et Marie Currie, 9 Quai St., Bernard, Paris, 75005, France

    Christopher Summerfield

  2. Département d'Études Cognitives, Ecole Normale Supérieure, 29 Rue d'Ulm, Paris, 75005, France

    Christopher Summerfield

  3. Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer's Disease Center, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, 320 East Superior Street, Searle 11, Chicago, 60611, Illinois, USA

    Emily H Trittschuh, Jim M Monti, M-Marsel Mesulam & Tobias Egner

Authors
  1. Christopher Summerfield
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  2. Emily H Trittschuh
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  3. Jim M Monti
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  4. M-Marsel Mesulam
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  5. Tobias Egner
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Contributions

C.S., T.E., E.H.T. and M.-M.M. conceived of the experiment, C.S. and T.E. designed the experiment, T.E., E.H.T. and J.M.M. collected the data, T.E. analyzed the data and C.S. and T.E. wrote the paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Tobias Egner.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Text and Figures

Supplementary Figures 1 and 2, Supplementary Table 1 and Supplementary Methods (PDF 337 kb)

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Summerfield, C., Trittschuh, E., Monti, J. et al. Neural repetition suppression reflects fulfilled perceptual expectations. Nat Neurosci 11, 1004–1006 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.2163

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.2163

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