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I have seen that before: Pattern completion in the human visual system and its role for memory

Project description

Unveiling the interplay of vision and memories

Our vision system is based on anticipation that allows us to calculate reaction to a stimulus that is known from past recollection. However, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have shown a temporally compressed pattern completion in a primary visual cortex as a reaction for signalisation of stimulus learned in the past. This is a visual preplay activity, resembling the anticipation model. The fascinating phenomena and their relation to memory need further explanation. The EU-funded VisPrepMem project will study the visual preplay effect through its inducted neural oscillations and its connections with memory. It will apply a combination of magnetoencephalography, fMRI and machine learning techniques to unveil the interplay of vision and memory in different brain areas.

Objective

The visual system is an anticipatory system. For example, in order to hit a tennis ball during a match, parts of the brain calculate the future trajectory of the tennis ball based on its past travel through the air to enable you to hit the ball. A recent study by Ekman et al. (2017) demonstrated how the visual system anticipates a ball’s trajectory in such a scenario. In their functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, they found temporally compressed pattern completion in primary visual cortex for a previously learned rapid stimulus sequence (simulating a moving dot) following the presentation of only the very first stimulus. This visual preplay activity reflects an anticipation of the future trajectory of a moving object based on previous experience, thereby intersecting vision and memory. Interestingly, the mechanism of pattern completion plays a big role in the reinstatement of memory traces in classical memory experiments. Whether the visual preplay effect is similar to the pattern completion in memory reinstatement, and whether the memory replay effect might be guided by visual preplay is currently unknown.
The proposed project will provide a better understanding of the nature of the visual preplay effect and its relation to memory. It will investigate the neural oscillations induced by the visual preplay effect together with its temporal unfolding, providing insight into information processing and communication between brain areas. It will also examine a possible link between this visual effect and memory by embedding the preplay experiment into a memory paradigm. The combination of magnetoencephalography (MEG) and fMRI methods together with state-of-the-art signal processing and machine learning will enable a comprehensive investigation of this effect at the boundary between vision and memory, thereby advancing our understanding of both the visual and memory system and, in particular, their interplay.

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MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)

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Call for proposal

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(opens in new window) H2020-MSCA-IF-2019

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Coordinator

STICHTING RADBOUD UNIVERSITEIT
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 175 572,48
Address
HOUTLAAN 4
6525 XZ Nijmegen
Netherlands

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Region
Oost-Nederland Gelderland Arnhem/Nijmegen
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 175 572,48
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