Short-term adaptation to stimulus statistics requires behavioral relevance S Glasauer1, P Maier2, F Petzschner3 |
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1Center for Sensorimotor Research, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany |
| Several recent studies have shown that short-term experience is used to adaptively improve perceptual estimates and map them to motor responses. Examples are visual distance estimation or manual reaching to visual targets. The underlying mechanism can be described as dynamic Bayesian updating of a prior distribution of the stimuli that is integrated with the current sensory input to form an improved estimate of the external stimulus. Notably, feedback on the actual performance is not required for this type of learning of the stimulus statistics. However, since the brain is normally confronted with a multitude of possible stimuli, this raises the question whether just experiencing the stimuli is sufficient to learn about them. Here we investigated whether it makes a difference for learning from experience whether or not participants are required to behaviorally react to a given stimulus. Our results show that on average participants only adapted to the stimulus statistics, if they had to reproduce the stimuli. Thus, sensory experience itself was not sufficient to learn the underlying stimulus statistics. Instead, behavioral relevance, i.e., whether or not to act upon a stimulus, determined whether the stimulus was used for short-term adaptation. Acknowledgments: Supported by BMBF (BCCN 01GQ0440). |
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