Perception is influenced by predictions about the sensory environment. These predictions are informed by past experience and can be shaped by exposure to recurring patterns of sensory stimulation. Predictions can enhance perception of a predicted stimulus, but they can also suppress it by favoring novel and unexpected sensory information that is inconsistent with the predictions. Here we investigate the role of prediction on visual perception by measuring how different types of predictions affect perceptual selection. We measure perceptual selection using binocular rivalry, a bistable phenomenon in which incompatible images presented separately to the two eyes result in perceptual alternation between the two images over time.

In one study, we show that by creating predictive priors through repeated exposure to arbitrary sequence of orientation gratings, subjects were more likely to perceive the grating that matched the orientation that was consistent with the predictive context. That is, observers were more likely to see what they expected to see, compared to the likelihood of perception of the unexpected stimulus.

In another study, we examine how other studies in the literature have reported the opposite effect of prediction on visual perceptual selection when the predictive prior is created with natural image sequences. We investigate if a relationship exists between these opposing effects of prediction. We measure this by studying effects of prediction from orientation gratings generated in our first study compared with predictions from natural images within the same individuals. We found no relationship between these two types of prediction. One possible explanation of these results is that the weighting of visual predictions differs between stimuli of different complexity. Unfortunately, although we found no correlation between these two types of predictions, we also did not replicate the effects of prediction seen previously for either type of stimuli.

Finally, we describe how binocular rivalry can be adapted for experiments outside of the lab that will be used to investigate how the constraints on conscious perception guided by visual priors may be relaxed under the influence of psychedelics in a clinical setting.