NIC Club - Full Faculty Meeting - Project Presentation

Description
 

Dear All,

On 6 May 2026 at 12.00 we have our NIC-Club-full faculty. In this meeting, Lisa Jeschke (Chair of Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience) will present her new project titled "Encoding of expectations in the lateral geniculate nucleus during visual recognition". 

Abstract
Human sensory processing relies on integrating expectations based on prior experiences. Predictive coding theories propose that the brain continuously generates such expectations about upcoming sensory input and compares them with actual input, producing prediction errors when expectations are violated. While such mechanisms have been demonstrated in cortical systems and in the auditory sensory thalamus, it remains unclear whether the visual sensory thalamus, the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN), also encodes prediction errors. In the present project, we investigate LGN responses during perception of rapid visual stimulus sequences in which the timing of an unexpected deviant stimulus varies in predictability. We test the hypotheses that unexpected stimuli evoke stronger LGN responses than predictable stimuli and that the neural responses fit predictive coding models. The findings will provide new insight into how early visual processing is shaped by top-down expectations.

Please let us know if you have further topics to discuss.