A human cortical adaptive mutual inhibition circuit underlying competition for perceptual decision and repetition suppression reversal
Teresa Sousa,
Alexandre Sayal,
João V. Duarte,
Gabriel N. Costa,
Miguel Castelo-Branco
Affiliations
Teresa Sousa
Coimbra Institute for Biomedical Imaging and Translational Research (CIBIT), University of Coimbra, Portugal; Institute of Nuclear Sciences Applied to Health (ICNAS), University of Coimbra, Portugal
Alexandre Sayal
Coimbra Institute for Biomedical Imaging and Translational Research (CIBIT), University of Coimbra, Portugal; Institute of Nuclear Sciences Applied to Health (ICNAS), University of Coimbra, Portugal; Siemens Healthineers, Portugal
João V. Duarte
Coimbra Institute for Biomedical Imaging and Translational Research (CIBIT), University of Coimbra, Portugal; Institute of Nuclear Sciences Applied to Health (ICNAS), University of Coimbra, Portugal; Faculty of Medicine, University of Coimbra, Portugal
Gabriel N. Costa
Coimbra Institute for Biomedical Imaging and Translational Research (CIBIT), University of Coimbra, Portugal; Institute of Nuclear Sciences Applied to Health (ICNAS), University of Coimbra, Portugal
Miguel Castelo-Branco
Coimbra Institute for Biomedical Imaging and Translational Research (CIBIT), University of Coimbra, Portugal; Institute of Nuclear Sciences Applied to Health (ICNAS), University of Coimbra, Portugal; Faculty of Medicine, University of Coimbra, Portugal; Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Maastricht, the Kingdom of the Netherlands; Corresponding author.
A model based on inhibitory coupling has been proposed to explain perceptual oscillations. This 'adapting reciprocal inhibition' model postulates that it is the strength of inhibitory coupling that determines the fate of competition between percepts. Here, we used an fMRI-based adaptation technique to reveal the influence of neighboring neuronal populations, such as reciprocal inhibition, in motion-selective hMT+/V5. If reciprocal inhibition exists in this region, the following predictions should hold: 1. stimulus-driven response would not simply decrease, as predicted by simple repetition-suppression of neuronal populations, but instead, increase due to the activity from adjacent populations; 2. perceptual decision involving competing representations, should reflect decreased reciprocal inhibition by adaptation; 3. neural activity for the competing percept should also later on increase upon adaptation. Our results confirm these three predictions, showing that a model of perceptual decision based on adapting reciprocal inhibition holds true. Finally, they also show that the net effect of the well-known repetition suppression phenomenon can be reversed by this mechanism.