ePoster · Cognition
Bayesian inference and arousal modulation in spatial perception to mitigate stochasticity and volatility
David Meijer, Fabian Dorok, Roberto Barumerli, Burcu Bayram, Michelle Spierings, Ulrich Pomper, Robert Baumgartner · Bernstein Conference 2024
Perceivers benefit from integrating their prior beliefs with sensory signals based on their relative reliability to mitigate the effects of stochastic noise. However, in volatile environments, one should avoid integrating these signals when changes in the signal source render their prior beliefs irrelevant. Bayesian causal inference could offer the brain an optimal strategy for adaptively adjusting its reliance on priors. Mechanistically, it has been suggested that the arousal system modulates the weights between prior beliefs and sensory signals accordingly. We tested these hypotheses using a