COLOUR · Colourful predictions? Unraveling the resolution and neural mechanisms of colour expectation
Horizon Europe — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2022-10-01 → 2025-03-31
- EU contribution
- €215,166
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF
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Results in brief
Colourful predictions? Unraveling the resolution and neural mechanisms of colour expectation
Whether watching TV or navigating through city traffic, our brain constantly tries to anticipate what will happen next. This mechanism is vital, since processing of the incoming visual information and the initiation of an adequate action takes time. Predictive processing theories suggest that our brain therefore constantly predicts incoming sensory information. The level of granularity and concrete sensory content of these predictions is, however, less clear. Specifically, while it has been shown that the mere expectation of a stimulus can trigger the formation of a template of this stimulus in sensory visual areas, so far we do not know whether such template contains color information. However, color expectations and the resolution at which they operate are especially crucial for real life. Color does not only play a huge role in every day visual search (looking for traffic signs at the street or for tomatoes in a grocery store), it also facilitates face and object recognition, and supports visual memory and non-verbal communication (e.g., flushed cheeks). Most importantly, what we expect will strongly influence what we perceive and how fast we can react to it. Hence, knowing which colors can be distinguished in expectation templates would help us, e.g., to better decide on the color of warning signals or traffic signs. The overall objective of the project was to unravel for the first time the neural mechanisms and resolution underlying color expectations. Where and when are they formed in the brain and do they contain decodable sensory color information?
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Whether doing sports or driving through city traffic, our visual system constantly builds expectations to predict and quickly react to upcoming events. However, despite the great importance of expectations, their form and neural implementation remain a mystery. It is completely unknown whether expectations encode a clear picture of the anticipated visual input or just a rough sketch. This gap in knowledge is vital, since only things encoded in our expectations are expected to enter conscious awareness faster. Given the high value of colour signals to guide attention in everyday life (e.g., traffic signs), this project asks where and when in the brain colour expectations are formed and if they are in full colour or just comprised of few basic hues. To track cortical colour expectations with high spatiotemporal precision, electro- and magnetoencephalography will be combined with anatomical brain scans and cutting-edge computational decoding in a new, integrative approach. First, a decoding model will be built that reconstructs colour from brain responses. Applying this new model to brain activity of participants anticipating colours will elucidate when and where in the brain colour expectations are formed. Combined behavioural and electromagnetic measures will then determine the influence of these expectations on our perception. Finally, combining the decoding model with colour similarity levels and individual colour categorizations will clarify the resolution of colour expectations. This project will be the first to unravel the neural mechanism, influence and limits of colour expectations. Together with the decoding model as future tool, this will open new perspectives on predictive processing, perception and imagery, but will also have widespread societal implications: designing of better recognizable colour traffic signals, improving colouring schemes in school books to more effectively guide attention, and even for decoding brain responses of locked-in patients.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- STICHTING RADBOUD UNIVERSITEIT · NijmegenCoordinatorNetherlands
Links
- View on CORDIS
- DOI: 10.3030/101061920
- https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/documents/downloadPublic?documentIds=080166e501ba22d2&appId=PPGMS
- https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/documents/downloadPublic?documentIds=080166e51bd45140&appId=PPGMS
Data: CORDIS, © European Union