High-resolution 7T fMRI reveals the visual sensory zone of the human claustrum

This study investigates the sensory-specific regions of the human claustrum. Participants were shown visual, auditory and audiovisual stimuli and claustrum responses were measured using high-resolution fMRI

The complexity of subjective experience during binocular rivalry

The appearance of transitions in binocular rivalry was categorized based on the content analysis of subjective descriptions of different transition types. The results also showed that the transitions in binocular rivalry appear in different forms and the stimulus content might trigger specific appearances of transitions

High-resolution manual Claustrum segmentation label

A high-resolution MRI Claustrum manual segmentation label. We manually labelled the left and the right claustrum label using a high-resolution brain. Due to the claustrum’s unique structure other labels that exist have some disadvantages. Therefore, we provide a high-resolution manually created label for the claustrum. We additionally provide oriented bounding boxes as a measure of size for the label and we provide additional measurements regarding the label’s characteristics. The labels are provided in MNI space and as such may be useable in the normal adult population

Pacmond dataset

Illusory Kanizsa shape whole-brain fMRI dataset with 30 participant

Distributed illusory figure-ground segmentation signatures across the dorsal and ventral streams

Investigation of illusory figure-ground segmentation signature

A common factor for illusory percepts

This project investigates whether different types of illusory percepts such as bistable illusions, pareidolias and hallucinations have a common underlying mechanism

Parietal cortex mediates perceptual Gestalt grouping independent of stimulus size

The integration of local moving elements into a unified gestalt percept has previously been linked to the posterior parietal cortex. There are two possible interpretations for the lack of involvement of other occipital regions. The first is that parietal cortex is indeed uniquely functionally specialized to perform grouping. Another possibility is that other visual regions can perform grouping as well, but that the large spatial separation of the local elements used previously exceeded their neurons' receptive field (RF) sizes, preventing their involvement. In this study we distinguished between these two alternatives. We measured whole-brain activity using fMRI in response to a bistable motion illusion that induced mutually exclusive percepts of either an illusory global Gestalt or of local elements. The stimulus was presented in two sizes, a large version known to activate IPS only, and a version sufficiently small to fit into the RFs of mid-level dorsal regions such as V5/MT. We found that none of the separately localized motion regions apart from parietal cortex showed a preference for global Gestalt perception, even for the smaller version of the stimulus. This outcome suggests that grouping-by-motion is mediated by a specialized size-invariant mechanism with parietal cortex as its anatomical substrate

No common factor for illusory percepts, but a link between pareidolia and delusion tendency: a test of predictive coding theory

Predictive coding theory is an influential view of perception and cognition. It proposes that subjective experience of the sensory information results from a comparison between the sensory input and the top-down prediction about this input, the latter being critical for shaping the final perceptual outcome. The theory is able to explain a wide range of phenomena ranging from sensory experiences such as visual illusions to complex pathological states such as hallucinations and psychosis. In the current study we aimed at testing the proposed connection between different phenomena explained by the predictive coding theory by measuring the manifestation of top-down predictions at progressing levels of complexity, starting from bistable visual illusions (alternating subjective experience of the same sensory input) and pareidolias (alternative meaningful interpretation of the sensory input) to self-reports of hallucinations and delusional ideations in everyday life. Examining the correlation structure of these measures in 82 adult healthy subjects revealed a positive association between pareidolia proneness and a tendency for delusions, yet without any relationship to bistable illusions. These results show that only a subset of the phenomena that are explained by the predictive coding theory can be attributed to one common underlying factor. Our findings thus support the hierarchical view of predictive processing with independent top-down effects at the sensory and cognitive levels