Surya Gayet

Utrecht University | UU

Predicting the location of moving objects in noisy environments is essential to everyday behavior, like when participating in traffic. Although many objects provide multisensory information, it remains unknown how humans use multisensory information to localize moving objects, and how this depends on expected sensory interference (e.g., occlusion)....

Visual working memory (VWM) is a cognitive system, which temporarily stores task-relevant visual information to enable interactions with the environment. In everyday VWM use, we typically decide how long we look to encode information, and how long we wait before acting on the memory. In contrast, VWM is typically studied in unnaturally rigid paradi...

In natural behavior, humans typically do not fully utilize their memory capacity but often choose to sample information from the external world to alleviate the burden on memory. This trade-off between memory and sampling has been demonstrated in previous studies by a stronger reliance on memory when sampling costs increase (e.g., longer waiting ti...

Visual working memory (VWM) is a store for temporary maintenance of visual information. It is often disregarded, though, that information is typically stored to enable actions. Therefore, the context of these actions is of great importance for how VWM is used. Here, we questioned whether the severity of the consequence of an action might affect how...

Steady-State Visual Evoked Potentials (SSVEPs) provide a report-free and continuous measure of neural processing. Recent progress in display technology has allowed for the tagging of multiple stimuli simultaneously at >60Hz frequencies - high enough to evade perceptibility, while still evoking an oscillatory neural response. Known as Rapid Invisibl...

According to theories of visual search, observers generate a visual representation of the search target (the “attentional template”) that guides spatial attention toward target-like visual input. In real-world vision, however, objects produce vastly different visual input depending on their location: your car produces a retinal image that is 10 tim...

Sensory input is inherently noisy while the world is inherently predictable. When multiple observations of the same object are available, integration of the available information necessarily increases the reliability of a world estimate. Optimal integration of multiple instances of sensory evidence has already been demonstrated during multisensory...

Statistical learning (SL) is a powerful mechanism that enables the rapid extraction of regularities from sensory inputs. While numerous studies have established that SL serves a wide range of cognitive functions, it remains unknown whether SL impacts conscious access. To address this question, we applied multiple paradigms in a series of experiment...

Fear and disgust have been associated with opposite influences on visual processing, even though both constitute negative emotions that motivate avoidance behavior and entail increased arousal. In the current study, we hypothesized that (a) homeostatic relevance modulates early stages of visual processing, (b) through widespread physiological respo...

As our viewpoint changes, the whole scene around us rotates coherently. This allows us to predict how one part of a scene (e.g., an object) will change by observing other parts (e.g., the scene background). While human object perception is known to be strongly context-dependent, previous research has largely focused on how scene context can disambi...

Visual working memory (VWM) is a store for temporary maintenance of visual information. It is often disregarded, though, that information is typically stored to enable actions. Therefore, the context of these actions is of great importance for how VWM is used. Here, we questioned whether the severity of the consequence of an action might affect how...

According to theories of visual search, observers generate a visual representation of the search target (the ‘attentional template’) that guides spatial attention towards target-like visual input. In real-world vision, however, objects produce vastly different visual input depending on their location: your car produces a retinal image that is ten t...

As our viewpoint changes, the whole scene around us rotates coherently. This allows us to predict how one part of a scene (e.g., an object) will change by observing other parts (e.g., the scene background). While human object perception is known to be strongly context-dependent, previous research has largely focused on how scene context can disambi...

Our visual environment is relatively stable over time. An optimized visual system could capitalize on this by devoting less representational resources to objects that are physically present. The vividness of subjective experience, however, suggests that externally available (perceived) information is more strongly represented in neural signals than...

Visual short-term memory (VSTM), intentionally remembering image features, relies on interacting sensory and executive processes. Sensory processing relies on tuned responses, organized in hierarchical networks of topographic maps. How does the brain distribute responses to task demands across neural populations? We examined neural responses to the...

A large part of research on visual working memory (VWM) has traditionally focused on estimating its maximum capacity. Yet, humans rarely need to load up their VWM maximally during natural behavior, since visual information often remains accessible in the external world. Recent work, using paradigms that take into account the accessibility of inform...

Any single object can produce a wide variety of images on the retinae, depending on its location in the world: the viewpoint, distance, and illumination dramatically alter the shape, size, and color of the retinal image. Yet, we are able to recognize objects within cluttered visual environments at a single glance. What might underlie this ability,...

Our visual environment is relatively stable over time and an optimized visual system ought to capitalize on this by not devoting any representational resources to objects that are still present. Subjective experience, however, suggests that externally available (i.e., perceived) information is more strongly represented in neural signals than memori...

When our eyes are confronted with discrepant images (yielding incompatible retinal inputs) interocular competition (IOC) is instigated. During IOC, one image temporarily dominates perception, while the other is suppressed. Many factors affecting IOC have been extensively examined. One factor that received surprisingly little attention, however, is...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0260952.].

Humans are remarkably proficient at finding objects within complex visual scenes. According to current theories of attention,1, 2, 3 visual processing of an object of interest is favored through the preparatory activation of object-specific representations in visual cortex.4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 One key problem that is inherent to...

Humans are remarkably proficient at finding objects within a complex visual world. Current theories of attentional selection propose that this ability is mediated by target-specific preparatory activity in visual cortex, biasing visual processing in favor of the target object. In real-world situations, however, the retinal image that any object wil...

Visual working memory (VWM) relies on a distributed cortical network. Yet, the extent to which individual cortical areas, like early visual cortex and intraparietal sulcus, are essential to VWM storage remains debated. Here, we reanalyze key datasets from two independent labs to address three topics at the forefront of current-day VWM research: Res...

Accessing the contents of visual short-term memory (VSTM) is compromised by information bottlenecks and visual interference between memorization and recall. Retro-cues, displayed after the offset of a memory stimulus and prior to the onset of a probe stimulus, indicate the test item and improve performance in VSTM tasks. It has been proposed that r...

The content of visual working memory influences the access to visual awareness. Thus far, research has focused on retention of a single feature, whereas memoranda in real life typically contain multiple features. Here, we intermixed a delayed match-to-sample task to manipulate VWM content, and a breaking Continuous Flash Suppression (b-CFS) task to...

Visual working memory (VWM) allows for keeping visual information available for upcoming goal-directed behavior, while new visual input is processed concurrently. Interactions between the mnemonic and perceptual systems cause VWM to affect the processing of visual input in a content-specific manner: visual input that is initially suppressed from co...

When searching for relevant objects in our environment (say, an apple), we create a memory template (a red sphere), which causes our visual system to favor template-matching visual input (applelike objects) at the expense of template-mismatching visual input (e.g., leaves). Although this principle seems straightforward in a lab setting, it poses a...

The way humans perceive the outcomes of their actions is strongly colored by their expectations. These expectations can develop over different timescales and are not always complementary. The present work examines how long-term (structural) expectations – developed over a lifetime - and short-term (contextual) expectations jointly affect perception...

Maintaining information in visual working memory (VWM) biases attentional selection of concurrent visual input, by favoring VWM-matching over VWM-mismatching visual input. Recently, it was shown that this bias disappears when the same item is memorized on consecutive occasions (as memoranda presumably transit from VWM to long-term memory), but reem...

Using breaking continuous flash suppression (b-CFS; a perceptual suppression technique), Gomes, Soares, Silva, and Silva (2018) showed that human observers have an advantage in detecting images of snakes (constituting an evolutionarily old threat) over birds. In their study, images of snakes and birds were filtered to contain either coarse-scale or...

Visual stimuli with social-emotional relevance have been claimed to gain preferential access to awareness. For example, recent studies used the breaking continuous flash suppression paradigm (b-CFS) to show that faces that are perceived as less dominant and more trustworthy are prioritized for awareness. Here we asked whether these effects truly re...

Using breaking continuous flash suppression (b-CFS; a perceptual suppression technique), Gomes and colleagues (2018) showed that human observers have an advantage in detecting images of snakes (constituting an evolutionarily old threat) over birds. In their study, images of snakes and birds were filtered to contain either coarse-scale or fine-grain...

At any moment in time, we have a single conscious visual experience representing a minute part of our visual world. As such, the visual input stimulating our retinae is in continuous competition for reaching conscious access. Many complex cognitive operations can only be applied to consciously accessible visual information, thereby raising the ques...

It is commonly assumed that one eye is dominant over the other eye. Eye dominance is most frequently determined by using the hole-in-the-card test. However, it is currently unclear whether eye dominance as determined by the hole-in-the-card test (so-called sighting eye dominance) generalizes to tasks involving interocular conflict (engaging sensory...

When searching for relevant objects in our environment (say, an apple) we create a memory template (a red sphere), which causes our visual system to favor template-matching visual input (apple-like objects) at the expense of template-mismatching visual input (e.g., leaves). While this principle seems straight-forward in a lab-setting, it poses a pr...

Visual stimuli with social-emotional relevance gain preferential access to awareness. While most work has focused on emotional facial expression, Stewart and colleagues (2012) recently showed that even trait-like social characteristics of faces influence visual awareness. Using the breaking continuous flash suppression paradigm (b-CFS), they found...

It is commonly assumed that one eye is dominant over the other eye. Eye dominance is most frequently determined by using the hole-in-the-card test. However, it is currently unclear whether eye dominance as determined by the hole-in-the-card test (so-called sighting eye dominance) generalizes to tasks involving interocular conflict (engaging sensory...

Perception is strongly shaped by the actions we perform. According to the theory of event coding, and forward models of motor control, goal-directed action preparation activates representations of desired effects. These expectations about the precise stimulus identity of one’s action-outcomes (i.e. identity predictions) are thought to selectively i...

Visual information that is relevant for an observer gains prioritized access to awareness (Gayet, Van der Stigchel, & Paffen, 2014). Here we investigate whether information that was relevant for an extended duration is prioritized for access to awareness when it is no longer relevant. We applied a perceptual-learning paradigm, in which observers we...

Humans typically make several saccades per second. This provides a challenge for the visual system as locations are largely coded in retinotopic (eye-centered) coordinates. Spatial remapping, the updating of retinotopic location coordinates of items in visuospatial memory, is typically assumed to be limited to robust, capacity-limited and attention...

Visual short term memory allows us to access visual information after termination of its retinal input. Generally, a distinction is made between a robust, capacity-limited form (working memory, WM) and high-capacity, pre-attentive, maskable forms (sensory memory, e.g. fragile memory, FM). Eye movements pose a challenge for spatial memory because re...

Visual working memory (VWM) is used to maintain visual information available for subsequent goal-directed behavior. The content of VWM has been shown to affect the behavioral response to concurrent visual input, suggesting that visual representations originating from VWM and from sensory input draw upon a shared neural substrate (i.e., a sensory re...

Models of biased competition assume that pre-activating a visual representation in visual working memory (VWM) biases perception towards memory-matching objects. Consistent with this, it has been shown that targets suppressed by interocular competition gain prioritized access to awareness when they match VWM content. Thus far, these VWM biases duri...

A recent focus in the field of consciousness research involves investigating the propensity of initially non-conscious visual information to gain access to consciousness. A critical tool for measuring conscious access is the so-called breaking continuous flash suppression paradigm (b-CFS). In this paradigm, a high contrast dynamic pattern is presen...

The content of visual working memory (VWM) affects the processing of concurrent visual input. Recently, it has been demonstrated that stimuli are released from interocular suppression faster when they match rather than mismatch a color that is memorized for subsequent recall. In order to investigate the nature of the interaction between visual repr...

At any moment in time we are submerged in an overwhelming amount of visual information. If our brains were to consciously process all the information reaching our eyes, it would take us a lifetime just to read this sentence. Fortunately, part of the information that reaches our eyes enjoys a privileged position: it is summarized into a single coher...

Abstract Visual information that is actively maintained in working memory has been shown to affect concurrent perception. One possible explanation is that working memory and sensory representations embody a common neural substrate. Here, we hypothesized that visual information maintained in working memory should enhance concurrent processing of vis...

Visual information that is actively maintained in working memory has been shown to affect concurrent perception. One possible explanation is that working memory and sensory representations embody a common neural substrate. Here, we hypothesized that visual information maintained in working memory should enhance concurrent processing of visual input...

The present study addresses the question whether visual information that signals threat is prioritized for access to awareness. We combined a fear conditioning procedure with a breaking continuous flash suppression (b-CFS) task. In this task, participants were presented with high contrast dynamic masks to one eye, and a target grating presented to...

Poster presented at the 19th meeting of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness (ASSC 2015).

Only part of the visual information that impinges on our retinae reaches visual awareness. In a series of three experiments, we investigated how the task relevance of incoming visual information affects its access to visual awareness. On each trial, participants were instructed to memorize one of two presented hues, drawn from different color categ...

Background / Purpose: Bistable perception offers an insight in to how the visual system chooses between multiple interpretations of the visual world, while the stimulation remains constant. We manipulated the task-relevance of a stimulus by means of a memory task, such as to bias perceptual decisions during binocular rivalry accordingly. Main co...

Traditionally, interocular suppression is believed to disrupt high-level (i.e., semantic or conceptual) processing of the suppressed visual input. The development of a new experimental paradigm, breaking continuous flash suppression (b-CFS), has caused a resurgence of studies demonstrating high-level processing of visual information in the absence...

Sensory input that is not available for conscious report can still affect our behavior. Recent findings suggest that such subliminal information has the potency to influence behavior in a way that is dependent on the observer's current intentions. Here, we investigate whether conscious observation of stimulus relevance provides an incentive for the...

Visual working memory (VWM) is used to retain relevant information for imminent goal-directed behavior. In the experiments reported here, we found that VWM helps to prioritize relevant information that is not yet available for conscious experience. In five experiments, we demonstrated that information matching VWM content reaches visual awareness f...

In a series of experiments we tested whether information that matches the content of visual working memory (VWM) is prioritized by the visual system, such that this information reaches visual awareness faster than non-matching information. Trials in our experiments consisted of three phases: first, a colored patch (i.e. the cue) was shown, which pa...