A crucial ability of the human brain is to learn and exploit probabilistic associations between stimuli to facilitate perception and behavior by predicting future events. Although studies have shown how perceptual relationships are used to predict sensory inputs, relational knowledge is often between concepts rather than percepts (e.g., we learned to associate cats with dogs, rather than specific images of cats and dogs). Here, we asked if and how sensory responses to visual input may be modulated by predictions derived from conceptual associations. To this end we exposed participants of both sexes to arbitrary word–word pairs (e.g., car–dog) repeatedly, creating an expectation of the second word, conditional on the occurrence of the first. In a subsequent session, we exposed participants to novel word–picture pairs, while measuring fMRI BOLD responses. All word–picture pairs were equally likely, but half of the pairs conformed to the previously formed conceptual (word–word) associations, whereas the other half violated this association. Results showed suppressed sensory responses throughout the ventral visual stream, including early visual cortex, to pictures that corresponded to the previously expected words compared with unexpected words. This suggests that the learned conceptual associations were used to generate sensory predictions that modulated processing of the picture stimuli. Moreover, these modulations were tuning specific, selectively suppressing neural populations tuned toward the expected input. Combined, our results suggest that recently acquired conceptual priors are generalized across domains and used by the sensory brain to generate category-specific predictions, facilitating processing of expected visual input.

SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Perceptual predictions play a crucial role in facilitating perception and the integration of sensory information. However, little is known about whether and how the brain uses more abstract, conceptual priors to form sensory predictions. In our preregistered study, we show that priors derived from recently acquired arbitrary conceptual associations result in category-specific predictions that modulate perceptual processing throughout the ventral visual hierarchy, including early visual cortex. These results suggest that the predictive brain uses prior knowledge across various domains to modulate perception, thereby extending our understanding of the extensive role predictions play in perception.

人脑的一项重要能力是学习和利用刺激之间的概率关联，通过预测未来事件来促进感知和行为。尽管研究已经表明如何使用感知关系来预测感官输入，但关系知识通常是在概念之间而不是感知之间（例如，我们学会将猫与狗联系起来，而不是猫和狗的特定图像）。在这里，我们询问是否以及如何通过从概念关联得出的预测来调节对视觉输入的感官反应。为此，我们让男女参与者反复接触任意单词对（例如，汽车-狗），以第一个单词的出现为条件，产生对第二个单词的期望。在随后的会议中，我们让参与者接触新颖的文字-图片对，同时测量功能磁共振成像大胆反应。所有单词-图片对的可能性相同，但一半对符合先前形成的概念（单词-单词）关联，而另一半则违反了这种关联。结果显示，与意外单词相比，整个腹侧视觉流（包括早期视觉皮层）对与先前预期单词相对应的图片的感觉反应受到抑制。这表明学习到的概念关联被用来生成调节图像刺激处理的感官预测。此外，这些调制正在调整特定的、选择性的抑制神经群体，以适应预期的输入。综合起来，我们的结果表明，最近获得的概念先验可以跨领域推广，并被感觉大脑用来生成特定类别的预测，从而促进预期视觉输入的处理。

意义陈述感知预测在促进感知和感官信息整合方面发挥着至关重要的作用。然而，关于大脑是否以及如何使用更抽象、概念性的先验来形成感官预测，人们知之甚少。在我们的预先注册研究中，我们表明，从最近获得的任意概念关联中得出的先验会导致特定类别的预测，从而调节整个腹侧视觉层次（包括早期视觉皮层）的感知处理。这些结果表明，预测大脑利用各个领域的先验知识来调节感知，从而扩展了我们对预测在感知中发挥的广泛作用的理解。