Cholinergic contributions to attention and learning: a cross-species approach

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One of the remaining fundamental questions in psychology and neuroscience is how our knowledge can shape perception. That is, the relationship between believing and seeing. Theoretical models propose that knowledge-driven and sensory-driven processing are directly influenced by the degree of predictive information available about one's sensory environment via the neurochemical acetylcholine (ACh). Specifically, they propose that in cases of an low predictability ACh promotes sensory-driven processing and in cases of highly predictability knowledge-driven processing is sufficient. Thus, when in doubt about the reliability of one's sensory environment, ACh may bias attention to promote sensory-driven cortical processing, which may override the influence of the knowledge-driven frontoparietal cortical network. Through selective removal of ACh from the rat cortex with a cholinergic immunotoxic lesion technique as well as blockade of ACh in the human brain while they are being scanned with the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technique, we will examine whether reduced ACh will exacerbate our reliance on knowledge-driven perceptual inference so that the rat and human participants will be more likely to see what they believe? We expect that these studies will yield critical insights as to how attention and learning interface with early stages of perception.