ArticleNature neuroscience2024
A unifying theory explains seemingly contradictory biases in perceptual estimation.
Article in Nature neuroscience, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 21 papers.
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Who cites it
21 citing papers in PubMed.
- Serial dependence in time perception requires consistent motor responses, not shared memory alone.British journal of psychology (London, England : 1953) · 2026Article
- Identifiability of Bayesian models of perception.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Flexible Perception of Tactile Cues in Multiple Reference Frames.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Distilling noise characteristics and prior expectations in multisensory causal inference.PLoS computational biology · 2026Article
- Endogenous precision of the number sense.eLife · 2026Article
- Computational modeling uncovers a dynamic interaction between feature uncertainty and perception-action mapping scaling in visual perception.Behavior research methods · 2026Article
- Motion direction biases around the clock: Learned and in-built direction priors pull perception and pursuit apart.Journal of vision · 2026Article
- Article
- Motor biases reflect a misalignment between visual and proprioceptive reference frames.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Diverse perceptual biases emerge from Hebbian plasticity in a recurrent neural network model.Neuron · 2025Article
- Computational and Neuronal Basis of Visual Confidence.Annual review of vision science · 2025Review
- Sequential effects in reaching reveal efficient coding in motor planning.Science advances · 2025Article
- Belief updating in decision-variable space: More fine-grained choices attract future ones more strongly.iScience · 2025Article
- A universal power law optimizes energy and representation fidelity in visual adaptation.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Bayesian inference by visuomotor neurons in the prefrontal cortex.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Representational geometry explains puzzling error distributions in behavioral tasks.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Weight illusions explained by efficient coding based on correlated natural statistics.Communications psychology · 2024Article
- Sequential Effects in Reaching Reveal Efficient Coding in Motor Planning.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Bayesian inference by visuomotor neurons in prefrontal cortex.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Sensory-memory interactions via modular structure explain errors in visual working memory.eLife · 2024Article
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
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Abstract
Perceptual biases are widely regarded as offering a window into the neural computations underlying perception. To understand these biases, previous work has proposed a number of conceptually different, and even seemingly contradictory, explanations, including attraction to a Bayesian prior, repulsion from the prior due to efficient coding and central tendency effects on a bounded range. We present a unifying Bayesian theory of biases in perceptual estimation derived from first principles. We demonstrate theoretically an additive decomposition of perceptual biases into attraction to a prior, repulsion away from regions with high encoding precision and regression away from the boundary. The results reveal a simple and universal rule for predicting the direction of perceptual biases. Our theory accounts for, and yields, new insights regarding biases in the perception of a variety of stimulus attributes, including orientation, color and magnitude. These results provide important constraints on the neural implementations of Bayesian computations.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.