A model of expectation effects in inferior temporal cortex

Preliminary experimental data suggests that primate inferior temporal corte x implements an automatic mechanism of expectation: inter-stimulus delay ac tivity often increases or decreases monotonically. The slope of the activit y is such that the maximum/minimum is always reached at the time of the ons et of the second stimulus, adapting to the length of the interval. This mec hanism could play an important role for a variety of neural computations th at act on a time scale of a few seconds. We developed a model that reproduc es such monotonically increasing activity by making use of short-term synap tic facilitation and network effects. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All ri ghts reserved.