Botvinik-Nezer Rotem, Geuter Stephan, Lindquist Martin A, Wager Tor D
Department of Psychology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel.
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, United States of America.
PLoS Comput Biol. 2025 May 22;21(5):e1013053. doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1013053. eCollection 2025 May.
Bayesian accounts of perception, such as predictive processing, suggest that perceptions integrate expectations and sensory experience, and thus assimilate to expected values. Furthermore, more precise expectations should have stronger influences on perception. We tested these hypotheses using a within-subject paradigm with social cues consisting of what participants were told were ratings from 10 prior participants, but which were actually constructed to independently manipulate the cue mean, variance (precision), and skewness independent of the actual stimulus intensity delivered. Forty-five participants reported their expectations regarding the painfulness of thermal stimuli or the visual contrast of flickering checkerboards. In a second session, similar (sham) cues were each followed by either a noxious thermal or a visual stimulus. Perceptions assimilated to cue-based expectations in both modalities, but precision effects were modality-specific: more precise cues enhanced assimilation in visual perception only, while higher uncertainty slightly increased reported pain. fMRI analysis revealed that the cues affected higher-level affective and cognitive systems--including assimilation to the cue mean in the Stimulus Intensity-Independent Pain Signature-1 (SIIPS-1), a neuromarker of endogenous pain processing--and in the nucleus accumbens. There were no predictive cue effects on the Neurological Pain Signature (NPS), a neuromarker of nociceptive pain. Region of interest analyses showed activity consistent with aversive prediction-error-like encoding in the periaqueductal gray during pain perception, but no cue or prediction error-related responses in early perceptual processing systems. Furthermore, behavioral and computational models of the expectation session revealed that expectations construction was biased towards extreme cue values in both modalities, and towards low-pain cues specifically. These findings suggest that predictive processing theories should be extended with mechanisms such as selective attention to outliers, and that expectation generation and its perceptual effects vary by sensory modality and primarily influence higher-level processes rather than early perception, at least when cues are not reinforced.
贝叶斯感知理论，如预测处理理论，认为感知整合了期望和感官体验，从而趋向于期望值。此外，更精确的期望对感知的影响应该更强。我们使用一种被试内范式对这些假设进行了测试，该范式采用了社会线索，这些线索是参与者被告知的来自10名先前参与者的评分，但实际上是被构建用来独立操纵线索均值、方差（精度）和偏度，而与实际呈现的刺激强度无关。45名参与者报告了他们对热刺激疼痛程度或闪烁棋盘视觉对比度的期望。在第二个阶段，类似的（假）线索之后分别跟着一个有害热刺激或视觉刺激。在两种模态中，感知都趋向于基于线索的期望，但精度效应是模态特异性的：更精确的线索仅增强了视觉感知中的趋向性，而更高的不确定性则略微增加了报告的疼痛程度。功能磁共振成像分析表明，这些线索影响了更高层次的情感和认知系统——包括在刺激强度独立疼痛特征-1（SIIPS-1，内源性疼痛处理的神经标记物）中对线索均值的趋向性，以及在伏隔核中的趋向性。对神经病理性疼痛标记物神经病理性疼痛特征（NPS）没有预测线索效应。感兴趣区域分析显示，在疼痛感知过程中，导水管周围灰质存在与厌恶预测误差样编码一致的活动，但在早期感知处理系统中没有线索或预测误差相关反应。此外，期望阶段的行为和计算模型表明，期望构建在两种模态中都偏向于极端线索值，并且特别偏向于低疼痛线索。这些发现表明，预测处理理论应该通过诸如对异常值的选择性注意等机制来扩展，并且期望生成及其感知效应因感官模态而异，并且主要影响更高层次的过程而不是早期感知，至少在线索没有得到强化时是这样。
