PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Bianca M. van Kemenade
AU  - Gregor Wilbertz
AU  - Annalena Müller
AU  - Philipp Sterzer
TI  - Non-stimulated regions in early visual cortex encode the contents of conscious visual perception
AID  - 10.1101/2020.11.13.381269
DP  - 2020 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2020.11.13.381269
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/11/15/2020.11.13.381269.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/11/15/2020.11.13.381269.full
AB  - Predictions shape our perception. The theory of predictive processing poses that our brains make sense of incoming sensory input by generating predictions, which are sent back from higher to lower levels of the processing hierarchy. These predictions are based on our internal model of the world and enable inferences about the hidden causes of the sensory input data. It has been proposed that conscious perception corresponds to the currently most probable internal model of the world. Accordingly, predictions influencing conscious perception should be fed back from higher to lower levels of the processing hierarchy. Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and multivoxel pattern analysis to show that non-stimulated regions of early visual areas contain information about the conscious perception of an ambiguous visual stimulus. These results indicate that early sensory cortices in the human brain receive predictive feedback signals that reflect the current contents of conscious perception.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.