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Authors & Affiliations
Raj V Jain, Sridharan Devarajan
Abstract
Our experiences from the recent past, even if no longer relevant, can powerfully shape our current choices. Such “serial dependence” has been observed ubiquitously in various cognitive phenomena [1]. Recent work suggests a causal role of the PPC in mediating serial dependence in rodents [2]; similar evidence in humans is correlative at best [3]. Does the PPC causally mediate serial dependence in humans?
We analyzed data from participants (n=26) performing a spatially cued change detection task [4]. Participant received either 40-Hz transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) over the PPC or “baseline” sham stimulation, in different sessions [4,5] (Fig. 1A-B). We trained a novel recurrent deep-learning model – an embedding-augmented long short-term memory network (LSTM) – to predict trial-wise response times (RT) from the sequential history of task variables (Fig. 1C).
Robust serial dependencies in RT emerged at baseline, as quantified by predictive correlations and accuracy (Fig. 2A-B, Sham, p<0.001, signed-rank test). Remarkably, 40-Hz tACS over the left or the right PPC significantly reduced serial dependence effects (Fig. 2A-B, Sham-Stim; p<0.01). Control experiments revealed that serial dependencies: i) returned to baseline in a post-stimulation “washout” session (Fig. 2A-B, Sham-Post; p>0.1), and ii) were not affected by a control frequency (60 Hz) of stimulation over the rPPC (p=0.560, rmANOVA).
Explanatory analysis with SHAP (SHapley Additive exPlanations) [6,7] revealed that, although PPC stimulation did not alter current trial variables’ influence on RT (Fig. 2C, Sham-Stim, T-0, p=0.625), it accelerated the decay of past trial variables’ history effects (Fig. 2D, p=0.016). Additionally, PPC stimulation reduced the influence of cue validity history, but not cue side history, on current trial RT (Fig. 2E-F).
Our findings suggest a causal role of the human PPC in serial dependence. In particular, the PPC may mediate history-driven selection [8] by which attentional choices from the recent past influence current behavior.