Expectation, attention and context in perceptual inference

This thesis examines the role that prior knowledge, expectations and attention play in visual perception. It presents new experimental methods through which brain activity related to the integration of expectations with the sensory signals can be identified, and it demonstrates how factors such as attention, prior expectations and the context within which an object is observed influence the way the brain processes incoming visual information during perception. The findings of this thesis can inform the study of perception across a wide range of domains.