Attention required for neural marker of error detection in visual system

A University of California, Irvine-led team of researchers have discovered that a neural marker of error detection within the brain’s visual system previously considered pre-attentive may very well require attention and that subtle visual irregularities could also be revealed by other neural markers.

Research findings were published in June in Plos Biology in a brand new study titled, “Attention is required for canonical brain signature of prediction error despite early encoding of the stimuli.”

Based on predictive coding theory, a preferred theory for the way the brain efficiently processes its immediate sensory surroundings, extra processing is reserved for irregularities in sensory input which can be signposted by prediction errors.”

Alie G. Male, PhD, co-author and assistant project scientist, Department of Psychiatry & Human Behavior, UCI School of Medicine

For instance, imagine an individual’s brain is a automotive engine; prediction errors are like a check engine light that signals something is unsuitable. This check engine light is crucial for starting the strategy of investigation to rectify the problem.

“There are, nevertheless, an increasing variety of studies that failed to indicate the well-known neural marker of prediction error within the brain’s visual system,” Male said. For this reason, it’s problematic for those exploring atypical early visual processing indexed by absent or impaired prediction error signaling, she explained.

“For instance, if the well-known neural marker of prediction error shouldn’t be present in a patient sample, one might falsely conclude aberrant early sensory processing, namely failed irregularity detection when, in reality, the absence could possibly be explained by the necessity for unmet experimental conditions, equivalent to attention,” Male said.

To clarify an unmet condition with the sooner analogy of a check engine light, it’s like failing to see the check engine light before the engine overheats and assume the sensors aren’t working, when in point of fact, the overheating was signposted by one other error signal, just like the temperature gauge, and the check engine light only illuminates after the vehicle has been in drive for greater than 10 minutes.

This study goals to qualify the electrophysiology of typical early sensory processing without attention, allowing others to later qualify the electrophysiology of atypical early sensory processing without attention, Male explained.

“We discover that the well-known neural marker of prediction error within the brain’s visual system doesn’t occur for unattended, subtle, visual irregularities, despite evidence that their corresponding regularities are indeed encoded, although such irregularities could also be indexed by an earlier electrophysiological signal at the first visual cortices,” she said.

Along with this finding, their study also showed that subtle visual regularities are indeed encoded and observed via electrophysiology. Further research on the conditions needed for each indexes of error signaling will provide a more robust model of early visual processing within the visual cortex.

Male’s research was motivated by the frustrations of colleagues and peers with whom she discussed the problem in obtaining a reliable signal of the well-known neural correlate of prediction error signaling within the visual system, she said. They concluded that if there have been no signal, but did find evidence of encoding, they could further bolster the argument that the known neural correlate will not be the one index of irregularity signaling.

“We intend to further qualify the conditions needed for showing the well-known neural marker of error detection in order that other researchers can adopt optimal parameters in their very own irregularity detection research,” she said.

Male co-authored this research with Robert P. O’Shea, from the Discipline of Psychology on the College of Science, Health, Engineering and Education at Murdoch University in Perth, Australia.