Team member Ekman has shown temporally precise and spatially specific prediction signals in the primary visual cortex (Ekman et al, Nat Comm 2017). The pre-stimulus nature of these prediction signals was verified in a separate study (Kok, Mostert, de Lange PNAS 2017). These predictions appear to attenuate neural activity for incoming information (Richter, Ekman, de Lange J Neurosci 2018). Spatial object context serves as a prior that fills in corresponding retinotopic spatial regions (Ekman, Roelfsema, de Lange J Neurosci 2020), providing a neural implementation for spatial context effects.
Team member Fritsche has elucidated temporal context effects (Fritsche, Mostert, de Lange Curr Biol 2017), which can be opposite at different stages of the perceptual decision-making process. These effects are dependent on attention (Fritsche & de Lange JOV 2019), and they can be computationally understood as originating from an efficient encoding and Bayesian decoding strategy (Fritsche, Spaak, de Lange eLife 2020). We found opposite effects of choice history and evidence history, resolving a paradox of sequential choice bias (Bosch et al JOV 2020).
Finally, we found only limited support for the hypothesis stipulated in WP3 that predictions have distinct sensory consequences in individuals with ASD (Utzerath, Schmits, Buitelaar, de Lange Cortex 2018). Team member Bosch has examined similar prediction effects in temporal context. She found robust temporal context effects in ASD, which were not different from healthy controls. These results are currently still being written up.
Alongside these core projects, team member Perez-Bellido has also assisted in two studies of multisensory contextual modulations of perception, culminating in two publications (Luettke et al 2016, Luettke, Perez-Bellido et al 2018).
Altogether, the publications jointly underscore the importance of temporal and spatial context in perception and cognition, and explicate the neural and computational mechanisms by which these factors shape sensory and cognitive processes. These core computations appear largely unaltered in high functioning ASD patients, thereby not supporting a recent and influential hypothesis of Autism Spectrum Disorder.
