Predictions of Visual Content across Eye Movements and Their Modulation by Inferred Information

Abstract

The brain is proposed to operate through probabilistic inference, testing and refining predictions about the world. Here, we search for neural activity compatible with the violation of active predictions, learned from the contingencies between actions and the consequent changes in sensory input. We focused on vision, where eye movements produce stimuli shifts that could, in principle, be predicted. We compared, in humans, error signals to saccade-contingent changes of veridical and inferred inputs by contrasting the electroencephalographic activity after saccades to a stimulus presented inside or outside the blind spot. We observed early (<250 ms) and late (>250 ms) error signals after stimulus change, indicating the violation of sensory and associative predictions, respectively. Remarkably, the late response was diminished for blind-spot trials. These results indicate that predictive signals occur across multiple levels of the visual hierarchy, based on generative models that differentiate between signals that originate from the outside world and those that are inferred.