Osik JJ., Roy A., Ritter NJ., Miller J., Wang Y., Fiser J. & Van Hooser SD. (2014) Spatiotemporally controlled optogenetic activation of developing ferret visual cortex. SFN 2014, Washington, DC [Abstract]
Realizing the full potential of optogenetic techniques will require concurrent development of light delivery technologies that improve spatial and temporal control of neuronal stimulation to facilitate increasingly informative electrophysiology recordings. Excitation (or inhibition) by light-activation of channelrhodopsin (ChR) and its many variants has quickly emerged as a preferred methodology in the neurosciences by reason of […]
Fiser J., Koblinger Á. & Arató J. (2019) Uncertainty-based adjustment of internal model during perceptual sequential decision-making. SNF 2019 [Abstract]
Abstract: Repeated perceptual decision-making is typically investigated under the tacit assumption that each decision is an independent process or, at most, it is influenced by a few decisions made prior to it. We investigated human sequential 2-AFC decision-making under the condition, when more than one aspect of the context could vary during the experiment: both […]
Fiser J., Lengyel G., Lengyel M. & Wolpert D. (2017) Emergence of object representations through generalization between visual and haptic statistics. Conference on Interdisciplinary Advances in Statistical Learning Bilbao, Spain [Abstract]
The emergence of the concept defining a discrete object in the brain is a fundamental yet poorly understood process. In two statistical learning experiments, we show that humans can form these abstract concepts via purely visual statistics or physical interactions, which nevertheless will generalize across these two modalities. Participants saw a sequence of visual scenes […]
Arato J., Khani A., Rainer G. & Fiser J. (2015) Statistical determinants of sequential visual decision-making. ECVP 2015, Perception 44, 369-369 [Abstract]
Apart from the raw visual input, people’s perception of temporally varying ambiguous visual stimuli is strongly influenced by earlier and recent summary statistics of the sequence, by its repetition/alternation structures, and by the subject’s earlier decisions and internal biases. Surprisingly, neither a thorough exploration of these effects nor a framework relating those effects exist in […]
Haefner RM., Berkes P. & Fiser J. (2013) Top-down influences on sensory processing during perceptual decision-making and attention. SFN 2013, San Diego, CA [Abstract]
Recent work has established the importance of top-down influences on early sensory processing. These influences are alternatively taken as representing task context, attention, expectation, working memory and motor commands (Gilbert & Li, 2013). At the same time, top-down influences have been recognized as essential for supporting probabilistic inference (Lee & Mumford, 2003). Here, we combine […]
Koblinger Á., Zoltowski D., Fiser J. & Lengyel M. (2019) Noise or signal? Psychophysical evidence for the role of sensory variability. COSYNE 2019, Lisbon, Portugal [Abstract]
Stimulus-independent fluctuations in the responses of sensory neurons are traditionally considered as mere noise, and thus a source of perceptual ambiguity. In contrast, sampling-based models of perceptual inference suggest that the magnitude of this intrinsic variability acts as a signal: it conveys information about the uncertainty in low-level perceptual estimates. In both cases, to improve […]
Fiser J., Lengyel G. & Nagy M. (2017) Visual statistical learning provides scaffolding for emerging object representations. VSS 2017, Journal of Vision 17 (10), 39-39 [Abstract]
Although an abundance of studies demonstrated human’s abilities for visual statistical learning (VSL), much fewer studies focused on the consequences of VSL. Recent papers reported that attention is biased toward detected statistical regularities, but this observation was restricted to spatial locations and provided no functional interpretation of the phenomenon. We tested the idea that statistical […]
Fiser J., Koblinger Á. & Arató J. (2015) The interplay between long-and short-term memory traces in sequential visual decision making. SFN 2015, Chicago, IL [Abstract]
Past experience strongly guides sensory processing and influences every perceptual decision. Yet, due to contradictory findings in the literature, the exact pattern of these effects is unclear and a convincing general computational framework underlying these effects is still missing. Even in the simplest version of the problem, making a forced choice between two hypotheses based […]
Popovic M., Van Hooser S. & Fiser J. (2013) Testing the functional significance of directional selectivity in the developing primary visual cortex SFN 2013, San Diego, CA [Abstract]
Directional selectivity (DS) is known to increase significantly in ferrets during two weeks after eye opening and it has been shown to strongly depend on visual experience (Li et al. 2008, Nature). Such selectivity to features of the input is traditionally assumed to indicate the functional maturity of the visual system, however, this assumption has […]