Review
Cortical oscillations and sensory predictions

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Many theories of perception are anchored in the central notion that the brain continuously updates an internal model of the world to infer the probable causes of sensory events. In this framework, the brain needs not only to predict the causes of sensory input, but also when they are most likely to happen. In this article, we review the neurophysiological bases of sensory predictions of “what’ (predictive coding) and ‘when’ (predictive timing), with an emphasis on low-level oscillatory mechanisms. We argue that neural rhythms offer distinct and adapted computational solutions to predicting ‘what’ is going to happen in the sensory environment and ‘when’.

Section snippets

Cortical oscillations and sensory predictive mechanisms

Our sensory environment is full of regularities, for example, repetitive stimuli and contexts, which we use to predict future events. A popular hypothesis is that the brain hosts internalized representations of the world from which it predicts “what’ happens in the sensory environment [1]. This theory, referred to as ‘predictive coding’, assumes that the brain infers the most likely causes of sensory events, which are often not directly accessible to the senses [2]. Predictive coding is

Predicting ‘when’: oscillation-based predictive timing

Predicting with accuracy ‘when’ the next event is going to happen implies having internalized the regularity of events [8]. This would be a difficult task if events presented themselves in random temporal sequences. Most meaningful stimuli, however, show strong regularities. Biological signals exhibit quasi-periodic modulations, which makes them very predictable in time. When these stimuli are produced by living entities, they reflect their properties, in particular the fact that neuronal

Predicting ‘what’: a hypothetical oscillatory framework for predictive coding

How the brain predicts ‘what’ is going to happen in its sensory environment has been extensively discussed at a theoretical level [25]. According to predictive coding and other popular theories of perception (analysis-by-synthesis, generative models) 1, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, the brain uses available information continuously to predict forthcoming events and reduce sensory uncertainty. While doing so, it presumably exploits the errors made when predicting events to update internal representations

Combining predictive timing and coding in the oscillatory framework: the example of speech processing

In this article, we have presented two means the brain may use to predict its sensory environment. Predictive timing uses the temporal regularities of sensory input to minimize the sensory processing of events that do not require extensive processing, which frees cognitive resources for higher-order cognitive processes. The most compelling example is probably that of speech comprehension. Continuous speech perception results from cortical sequencing into segments or units that most likely do

Acknowledgements

We thank Alexandre Hyafil, David Poeppel, Valentin Wyart, Benjamin Morillon, and Andreas Kleinschmidt for their comments on the manuscript; Karl Friston, Virginie van Wassenhove, and Sophie Denève for useful discussions.

Glossary

Predictive coding
the idea that the brain generates hypotheses about the possible causes of forthcoming sensory events and that these hypotheses are compared with incoming sensory information. The difference between top-down expectation and incoming sensory inputs, that is, prediction error, is propagated forward throughout the cortical hierarchy.
Predictive timing (temporal expectations)
an extension of the notion of predictive coding to the exploitation of temporal regularities (such as a beat)

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