title: An event-related potential study on perceptual learning in grating orientation discrimination.
abstract: This study aims to investigate the neural mechanism of visual perceptual learning in grating orientation discrimination. We recorded event-related potentials of human adults when they were trained with a grating orientation discrimination task. Although psychophysical thresholds decreased significantly across training sessions, event-related potentials showed larger P2 and P3 amplitudes and smaller N1 amplitudes over the parietal/occipital areas with more practice. In line with the psychophysical thresholds, the training effect on the P2 and P3 were specific to stimulus orientation. The N1 effect, however, was generalized over differently oriented gratings. Our findings show that several stages of visual processing are involved in perceptual learning and provide an illustration of the temporal relationship between specific and generalized perceptual learning in human adults.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China. songyan@bnu.edu.cn
authors.forename: Yan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Song
authors.forename: Danling
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Peng
authors.forename: Chunming
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Lu
authors.forename: Conghui
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Xiaolan
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Peipei
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Zhe
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Qu
authors.forename: Yulong
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Ding
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological / Q000502:physiology; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005074:Evoked Potentials, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D009949:Orientation / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D012684:Sensory Thresholds / Q000502:physiology; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*