Predictive Feedback, Early Sensory Representations, and Fast Responses to Predicted Stimuli Depend on NMDA Receptors

Learned associations between stimuli allow us to model the world and make predictions, crucial for efficient behavior (e.g., hearing a siren, we expect to see an ambulance and quickly make way). While there are theoretical and computational frameworks for prediction, the circuit and receptor-level mechanisms are unclear. Using high-density EEG, Bayesian modeling, and machine learning, we show that inferred "causal" relationships between stimuli and frontal alpha activity account for reaction times (a proxy for predictions) on a trial-by-trial basis in an audiovisual delayed match-to-sample task which elicited predictions. Predictive β feedback activated sensory representations in advance of predicted stimuli. Low-dose ketamine, an NMDAR blocker, but not the control drug dexmedetomidine, perturbed behavioral indices of predictions, their representation in higher-order cortex, feedback to posterior cortex, and pre-activation of sensory templates in higher-order sensory cortex. This study suggests that predictions depend on alpha activity in higher-order cortex, β feedback, and NMDARs, and ketamine blocks access to learned predictive information. We learn the statistical regularities around us, creating associations between sensory stimuli. These associations can be exploited by generating predictions, which enable fast and efficient behavior. When predictions are perturbed, it can negatively influence perception and even contribute to psychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia. Here we show that the frontal lobe generates predictions and sends them to posterior brain areas, to activate representations of predicted sensory stimuli before their appearance. Oscillations in neural activity (α and β waves) are vital for these predictive mechanisms. The drug ketamine blocks predictions and the underlying mechanisms. This suggests that the generation of predictions in the frontal lobe, and the feedback pre-activating sensory representations in advance of stimuli, depend on NMDARs.