Special issue: Editorial

Repetition suppression – An integrative view

Overview of contributions in this Special Issue

The label “repetition suppression” is in itself relatively unspecific, and has been used to refer to a range of phenomena. A stimulus is considered to be repeated when it is presented twice in rapid succession, but also when it appears 40 times in a row or when we are exposed to it once again, after a (minutes to days) long delay. The contributions of the Special Issue, just like the currently available literature, introduce many different variations of stimulus repetitions. The first

Conclusions

It is perhaps puzzling that the mechanisms behind such a simple phenomenon as the reduction of the neural activity to repeated compared to unrepeated stimuli remain insufficiently explained today, after almost fifty years of study. However, as the current Special Issue demonstrates, a whole plethora of paradigms and methods are used to test RS today and this makes their comparison difficult.

Accordingly, it would be extremely important to “set the scene” for every RS related experiment clearly.

Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the support of Sergio Della Sala for this special issue. We thank the VolkswagenStiftung for funding the RESUS summer school, and all contributors to the Special Issue for their efforts, discussions, and collaboration in keeping tight timelines.