Temporal dynamics of neural adaptation effect in the human visual ventral stream

When the same visual stimulus is repeatedly presented with a brief interval, the brain responses to that stimulus are attenuated relative to those at first presentation [neural adaptation (NA)]. Although this effect has been widely observed in various regions of human brain, its temporal dynamics as a neuronal population has been mostly unclear. In the present study, we used a magnetoencephalography (MEG) and conducted a macrolevel investigation of the temporal profiles of the NA occurring in the human visual ventral stream. The combination of MEG with our previous random dot blinking method isolated the neural responses in the higher visual cortex relating to shape perception. We dissociated three dimensions of the NA: activation strength, peak latency, and temporal duration of neural response. The results revealed that visual responses to the repeated compared with novel stimulus showed a significant reduction in both activation strength and peak latency but not in the duration of neural processing. Furthermore, this acceleration of peak latency showed a significant correlation with reaction time of the subjects, whereas no correlation was found between the reaction time and the temporal duration of neural responses. These results indicate that ( 1) the NA involves the brain response changes in the temporal domain as well as the response attenuation reported previously, and ( 2) this temporal change is primarily observed as a rapid rising of "what" responses, rather than a temporal shortening of neural response curves within the visual ventral stream as considered previously.