Neural correlates of visual perceptual learning in humans indexed by event‐related potentials

Abstract

The current work investigated the neural correlates of visual perceptual learning by recording event-related potentials (ERPs) from human adults. Subjects were trained with a discrimination task of arrow orientation in three consecutive training sessions within 2 hours. While reaction times (RTs) were shortened gradually across training sessions, the amplitudes of negativities between 125–155 ms (N1) and between 290–340 ms (N2) decreased mainly over the central and parietal areas respectively. However, a broadly distributed P3 component increased along with more practice. In addition, the decrease in N1 and increase in P3 preceded the decrease in N2. The implications of these results to the neural mechanisms subserving perceptual learning are discussed.