John T. Serences
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View article: Memory recall errors reflect interacting sensory and mnemonic representations
Memory recall errors reflect interacting sensory and mnemonic representations Open
Visual working memory (WM) enables the maintenance of information that is no longer present in the environment. Some accounts propose that WM is supported by abstract representations so that new sensory inputs do not interfere with existin…
View article: Feedback promotes efficient-coding while attenuating bias in recurrent neural networks
Feedback promotes efficient-coding while attenuating bias in recurrent neural networks Open
Studies of human decision-making demonstrate that environmental regularities, such as natural image statistics or intentionally nonuniform stimulus probabilities, can be exploited to improve efficiency (termed `efficient-coding'). Converse…
View article: Distributed and drifting signals for working memory load in human cortex
Distributed and drifting signals for working memory load in human cortex Open
Increasing working memory (WM) load incurs behavioral costs, and whether the neural constraints on behavioral costs are localized (i.e., emanating from the intraparietal sulcus) or distributed across cortex remains an active area of debate…
View article: Similarity-driven chunking during encoding supports biased but more precise working memory
Similarity-driven chunking during encoding supports biased but more precise working memory Open
Visual working memory (VWM) allows us to maintain and manipulate information in service of behavioral goals. Navigating rich visual environments often involves holding multiple items in VWM—some of them very similar. Recent work suggests t…
View article: Near-random connections support top-down feature-based attentional modulations in early sensory cortex
Near-random connections support top-down feature-based attentional modulations in early sensory cortex Open
Top-down feedback from prefrontal cortex (PFC) can enhance the gain of feature selective neurons in early sensory areas that are tuned to behaviorally relevant stimuli (termed feature-based attention ). Importantly, feature-based attention…
View article: Dynamic categorization rules alter representations in human visual cortex
Dynamic categorization rules alter representations in human visual cortex Open
Everyday tasks often require stimuli to be categorized dynamically, such that an identical object can elicit different responses based on the current decision rule. Traditionally, sensory regions have been viewed as separate from such cont…
View article: Serial dependence persists longer for imaginary versus real stimuli
Serial dependence persists longer for imaginary versus real stimuli Open
Perceptual reports across a range of tasks exhibit an attraction towards recent stimuli. This phenomenon is termed serial dependence and has been proposed to arise from internal priors of a natural world that changes slowly over time. Effo…
View article: A 2D Gabor-wavelet baseline model out-performs a 3D surface model in scene-responsive cortex
A 2D Gabor-wavelet baseline model out-performs a 3D surface model in scene-responsive cortex Open
Understanding 3D representations of spatial information, particularly in naturalistic scenes, remains a significant challenge in vision science. This is largely because of conceptual difficulties in disentangling higher-level 3D informatio…
View article: Mixing and mingling in visual working memory: inter-item competition is feature-specific during encoding and feature-general during maintenance
Mixing and mingling in visual working memory: inter-item competition is feature-specific during encoding and feature-general during maintenance Open
Visual working memory (WM) is a central cognitive ability but is capacity-limited due to competition between remembered items. Understanding whether inter-item competition depends on the similarity of the features being remembered has impo…
View article: Dynamic categorization rules alter representations in human visual cortex
Dynamic categorization rules alter representations in human visual cortex Open
Everyday perceptual tasks require sensory stimuli to be dynamically encoded and analyzed according to changing behavioral goals. For example, when searching for an apple at the supermarket, one might first find the Granny Smith apples by s…
View article: Dissociable Neural Mechanisms Underlie the Effects of Attention on Visual Appearance and Response Bias
Dissociable Neural Mechanisms Underlie the Effects of Attention on Visual Appearance and Response Bias Open
A prominent theoretical framework spanning philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience holds that selective attention penetrates early stages of perceptual processing to alter the subjective visual experience of behaviorally relevant stimuli.…
View article: Consequences of relaying top-down attentional modulations via neurons with high-dimensional selectivity
Consequences of relaying top-down attentional modulations via neurons with high-dimensional selectivity Open
When we select a specific visual feature as a focus of attention, neural responses in early visual areas to similar stimuli are amplified across the entire visual field. Top-down gain modulations originating from the parietal/prefrontal co…
View article: Inter-item competition during encoding and maintenance
Inter-item competition during encoding and maintenance Open
When multiple items are held in working memory, they interfere with one another and behavioral performance suffers. Models of working memory (WM) suggest that inter-item interference either arises due to feature-specific competition in spe…
View article: Univariate and multivariate load-dependent signals in human cortex
Univariate and multivariate load-dependent signals in human cortex Open
Early fMRI investigations of visual working memory identified a spatially localized, load-dependent increase in BOLD activity in the intraparietal sulcus, and this region has been hypothesized to play a particularly important role in worki…
View article: Working memory is robust to distractors but not sensory uncertainty
Working memory is robust to distractors but not sensory uncertainty Open
Prior research suggests that ongoing sensory input during the delay period of a working memory task presents a challenge to the storage of remembered information. Here, we tested whether distracting stimuli influenced working memory while …
View article: First encounters: Estimating the initial magnitude of attentional capture
First encounters: Estimating the initial magnitude of attentional capture Open
Salient but irrelevant information often captures our attention. To quantify attentional capture in the lab, participants typically complete dozens or hundreds of trials that contain salient distractors. However, presenting distractors fre…
View article: Perceptual Difficulty Regulates Attentional Gain Modulations in Human Visual Cortex
Perceptual Difficulty Regulates Attentional Gain Modulations in Human Visual Cortex Open
Perceptual difficulty is sometimes used to manipulate selective attention. However, these two factors are logically distinct. Selective attention is defined by priority given to specific stimuli based on their behavioral relevance, whereas…
View article: Distinguishing response from stimulus driven history biases
Distinguishing response from stimulus driven history biases Open
Perception is shaped by past experience, both cumulative and contextual. Serial dependence reflects a contextual attractive bias to perceive or report the world as more stable than it truly is. As serial dependence has often been examined …
View article: Interactions of sustained attention and visual search
Interactions of sustained attention and visual search Open
Attention waxes and wanes from moment to moment, and recent work has shown how fluctuations of sustained attention negatively impact working and long-term memory performance. Here, we tested whether ongoing attentional state influences att…
View article: Inter-item interference in visual working memory occurs jointly in feature-specific and feature-general codes
Inter-item interference in visual working memory occurs jointly in feature-specific and feature-general codes Open
A crucial feature of visual working memory is its flexibility: we are able to hold any type of visual stimulus in mind. This has prompted the development of biologically-realistic network models of working memory that account for both flex…
View article: Serial dependence to prior stimuli and past responses
Serial dependence to prior stimuli and past responses Open
Previous work on serial dependence has centered on whether attractive biases emerge during early sensory processing (Fisher & Whitney 2014, Cicchini et al., 2017) or are driven by decionsional or response production processes (Pascucci et …
View article: The neural cascading of early and late selection mechanisms in response to cognitive conflict
The neural cascading of early and late selection mechanisms in response to cognitive conflict Open
Adaptive behaviors require the ability to solve conflict from processing incompatible sensory information. Competing models have been proposed to explain mechanisms underlying conflict resolutions. Early selection accounts suggest that con…
View article: Global and spatially specific representations of 3D scene surface configurations in scene-selective cortex
Global and spatially specific representations of 3D scene surface configurations in scene-selective cortex Open
We know much more about neural representations of visual objects than we do about those of large extended surfaces in a scene, despite the importance of surfaces for navigation and evidence that object and scene representations are anatomi…
View article: Dissociable neural mechanisms of selective visual information processing underlie the effects of attention on visual appearance and response bias
Dissociable neural mechanisms of selective visual information processing underlie the effects of attention on visual appearance and response bias Open
It has been debated if attention can penetrate early perceptual representations to alter visual appearance or it simply induces response biases. Here, we tested these alternative accounts by evaluating attentional modulations of EEG respon…