Turner William, Sexton Charlie, Johnson Philippa A, Wilson Ella M, Hogendoorn Hinze
Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, California, United States of America.
School of Psychology & Counselling, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia.
PLoS Biol. 2025 May 23;23(5):e3003189. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3003189. eCollection 2025 May.
Neural processing of sensory information takes time. Consequently, to estimate the current state of the world, the brain must rely on predictive processes-for example, extrapolating the motion of a ball to determine its probable present position. Some evidence implicates early (pre-cortical) processing in extrapolation, but it remains unclear whether extrapolation continues during later-stage (cortical) processing, where further delays accumulate. Moreover, the majority of such evidence relies on invasive neurophysiological techniques in animals, with accurate characterization of extrapolation effects in the human brain currently lacking. Here, we address these issues by demonstrating how precise probabilistic maps can be constructed from human EEG recordings. Participants (N = 18, two sessions) viewed a stimulus moving along a circular trajectory while electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded. Using linear discriminant analysis (LDA) classification, we extracted maps of stimulus location over time and found evidence of a forwards temporal shift occurring across temporally distinct processing stages. This accelerated emergence of position representations indicates extrapolation occurring at multiple stages of processing, with representations progressively shifted closer to real-time. We further show evidence of representational overshoot during early-stage processing following unexpected changes to an object's trajectory, and demonstrate that the observed dynamics can emerge without supervision in a simulated neural network via spike-timing-dependent plasticity.
感觉信息的神经处理需要时间。因此，为了估计当前的世界状态，大脑必须依赖预测过程——例如，推断球的运动轨迹以确定其可能的当前位置。一些证据表明早期（皮层下）处理参与了推断，但尚不清楚在后期（皮层）处理过程中推断是否仍在继续，因为后期处理会累积更多延迟。此外，大多数此类证据依赖于对动物的侵入性神经生理学技术，目前缺乏对人类大脑中推断效应的准确表征。在这里，我们通过展示如何从人类脑电图记录中构建精确的概率图来解决这些问题。参与者（N = 18，两个阶段）观看一个沿圆形轨迹移动的刺激物，同时记录脑电图（EEG）。使用线性判别分析（LDA）分类，我们提取了随时间变化的刺激位置图，并发现了在时间上不同的处理阶段出现向前时间偏移的证据。位置表征的这种加速出现表明推断发生在多个处理阶段，表征逐渐向实时靠近。我们还进一步展示了在物体轨迹意外变化后的早期处理过程中表征超调的证据，并证明在模拟神经网络中，通过依赖于尖峰时间的可塑性，在无监督的情况下也能出现观察到的动态变化。
