Conference on Cognitive Computational Neuroscience

Perceptual representations are heavily influenced by rich prior knowledge and expectations conveyed via top-down cortical pathways. In addition to modulating and facilitating perception, internal models enable us to engage in prospective thoughts or mental simulations of our upcoming sensory environment. How is information related to immediate and future perception simultaneously represented in early visual cortex? We used virtual reality (VR) to induce internal models of a virtual environment in our human participants. We recorded BOLD activity using 3T and 7T fMRI while participants viewed videos following predictable navigation paths through the learned environment. We partially occluded the lower right quadrant of the video stimuli, allowing us to observe the top-down processing in the region of the early visual cortex in the absence of direct external input. SVM classification analyses revealed the presence of both contextual information about the present sensory inputs alongside information related to the future course of navigation. Our laminar analysis detected the anticipated future room information particularly in the deep and superficial layers of area V2 and deep layers of V3. Information about the current room was more easily detected in area V1 at the end of navigation when no future expectations were simultaneously present.