CNS 2024: Peter Kok, "The neural circuit underlying subjective perception" 

Peter Kok, Ph.D.(Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging) delivers a Young Investigator Award talk at CNS 2024 in Toronto.
Abstract: The way we perceive the world is strongly influenced by our expectations about what we are likely to see at any given moment. However, the neural mechanisms by which the brain achieves this remarkable feat have yet to be established. To understand the neural mechanisms underlying the interplay between sensory inputs and prior expectations, we need to investigate the way these signals flow at the level of cortical circuits, e.g. through the different cortical layers. Until recently, it was not possible to do this in non-invasive studies of humans, because the typical voxel size in fMRI is bigger than the full thickness of the cortex. I will discuss recent work in which we met this challenge by using fMRI at ultra-high field (7T) to obtain BOLD signals at very high resolution to disambiguate signals from the different cortical layers. This approach has allowed us to probe the neural circuitry underlying effects of expectation and subjective perception. I will also discuss the role of the hippocampus as a potential generator of top-down expectation effects in visual cortex, focusing on predictive stimulus representations in hippocampal subfields and informational connectivity with the visual cortex. Together, this work aims to shed new light on the neural circuitry underlying our perception of the world.