Elise G Rowe

• Doctor of Philosophy - Neuroscience
• Postdoctoral Research Fellow at University of Melbourne

The effects of top-down attention on perception have been intensively studied using binary categorization tasks (e.g., seen vs. unseen). However, such tasks poorly characterise the quality of experience, or qualia, for short. To characterise attentional effects on qualia, we combined a dual-task attention paradigm with similarity rating tasks to ex...

The effects of top-down attention on perception have been intensively studied using binary categorization tasks (e.g., seen vs. unseen). However, such tasks poorly characterise the quality of experience, or qualia, for short. To characterise attentional effects on qualia, we combined a dual-task attention paradigm with similarity rating tasks to ex...

The role of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) in consciousness is hotly debated. Frontal theories argue that the PFC is necessary for consciousness, while sensory theories propose that consciousness arises from recurrent activity in the posterior cortex alone, with activity in the PFC resulting from the mere act of reporting. To resolve this dispute, we...

Autism is a neurodevelopmental difference associated with specific autistic experiences and characteristics. Early models such as Weak Central Coherence and Enhanced Perceptual Functioning have tried to capture complex autistic behaviours in a single framework, however, these models lacked a neurobiological explanation. Conversely, current neurobio...

The effects of top-down attention on perception have been intensively studied using binary categorization tasks (e.g., seen vs. unseen). However, such tasks poorly characterise the quality of experience, or qualia, for short. To characterise attentional effects on qualia, we combined a dual-task attention paradigm with similarity rating tasks to ex...

Conscious visual motion information follows a cortical pathway from the retina to the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) and on to the primary visual cortex (V1) before arriving at the middle temporal visual area (MT/V5). Alternative subcortical pathways that bypass V1 are thought to convey unconscious visual information. One flows from the retina to...

Current theories of consciousness can be categorized to some extent by their predictions about the putative role of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) in conscious perception. One family of the theories proposes that the PFC is necessary for conscious perception. The other postulates that the PFC is not necessary and that other areas (e.g., posterior cort...

Anxiety can alter an individual's perception of their external sensory environment. Previous studies suggest that anxiety can increase the magnitude of neural responses to unexpected (or surprising) stimuli. Additionally, surprise responses are reported to be boosted during stable compared to volatile environments. Few studies, however, have examin...

Conscious visual motion information follows a cortical pathway from the retina to the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) and on to the primary visual cortex (V1) before arriving at the middle temporal visual area (MT/V5). Alternative subcortical pathways that bypass V1 are thought to convey unconscious visual information. One flows from the retina to...

Anxiety can alter an individual's perception of their external sensory environment. Previous studies suggest that anxiety can increase the magnitude of neural responses to unexpected (or surprising) stimuli. Additionally, surprise responses are reported to be boosted during stable compared to volatile environments. Few studies, however, have examin...

Detecting changes in the environment is fundamental for our survival. According to predictive coding theory, detecting these irregularities relies both on incoming sensory information and our top-down prior expectations (or internal generative models) about the world. Prediction errors (PEs), detectable in event-related potentials (ERPs), occur whe...

Detecting changes in the environment is fundamental for survival, as these may indicate potential rewards or threats. According to predictive coding theory, detecting these irregularities relies on both incoming sensory information and our prior beliefs; with incongruity between the two manifesting as a prediction error (PE) response. Many changes...

Predictive coding postulates that we make (top-down) predictions about the world and that we continuously compare incoming (bottom-up) sensory information with these predictions, in order to update our models and perception so as to better reflect reality. That is, our so-called “Bayesian brains” continuously create and update generative models of...

Predictive coding postulates that we make (top-down) predictions about the world and that we continuously compare incoming (bottom-up) sensory information with these predictions, in order to update our models and perception so as to better reflect reality. That is, our so-called 'Bayesian brains' continuously create and update generative models of...

Predictive coding posits that the human brain continually monitors the environment for regularities and detects inconsistencies. It is unclear, however, what effect attention has on expectation processes, as there have been relatively few studies and the results of these have yielded contradictory findings. Here, we employed Bayesian model comparis...

Predictive coding posits that the human brain continually monitors the environment for regularities and detects inconsistencies. It is unclear, however, what effect attention has on expectation processes, as there have been relatively few studies and the results of these have yielded contradictory findings. Here, we employed Bayesian model comparis...

When searching a crowd, people can detect a target face only by direct fixation and attention. Once the target is found, it is consciously experienced and remembered, but what is the perceptual fate of the fixated nontarget faces? Whereas introspection suggests that one may remember nontargets, previous studies have proposed that almost no memory s...

The ability to learn about regularities in the environment and to make predictions about future events is fundamental for adaptive behaviour. We have previously shown that people can implicitly encode statistical regularities and detect violations therein, as reflected in neuronal responses to unpredictable events that carry a unique prediction err...

Unlabelled: Each visual experience changes the neural response to subsequent stimuli. If the brain is unable to incorporate these encoding changes, the decoding, or perception, of subsequent stimuli is biased. Although the phenomenon of adaptation pervades the nervous system, its effects have been studied mainly in isolation, based on neuronal enc...