Marin-Campos, R. | bioRxiv Science

bioRxiv2026

History-dependent Biases in Perceptual Decisions Depend on NMDA Receptors

Perceptual decisions are governed not only by current sensory input but also by the history of previous stimuli, choices, or outcomes. Such history-dependent biases evolve across multiple timescales ranging from seconds to minutes. Synaptic plasticity is one possible mechanism mediating such effects. The by N-methyl-aspartate (NMDA) glutamate receptor is critical for synaptic plasticity, and indirect evidence points to its role in the generation of history-dependent biases. Here, we pharmacologically blocked NMDA receptors in healthy human participants performing a two-alternative visual decision-making task. Participants choices were biased by the accumulation of fluctuating sensory evidence within each trial as well as the accumulation of across-trial sequences of stimuli, which enabled them to adapt to changing stimulus statistics across blocks. NMDA receptor blockade reduced the task-adaptive across trials, history-dependent biases. In contrast, enhancing GABA-A receptor activity in the same participants increased the transiency of the within-trial evidence accumulation dynamics. Our findings provide direct evidence for the importance of NMDA receptor function in history-dependent biases in the human brain.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2019

Perceptual spatial suppression and sensitivity for motion are weakened in schizophrenia

Perceptual spatial suppression is a phenomenon in which the perceived strength of a stimulus in some region of the space is reduced when the stimulus is surrounded by other stimuli. For contrast perception, several studies suggest that spatial suppression is reduced in patients with schizophrenia. For motion perception, only one study has been conducted in a cohort of 16 patients, suggesting that spatial suppression is reduced. It is unknown, however, whether this reduction is related to the lower IQ that schizophrenic patients usually show; as there is evidence that spatial suppression for motion increases with IQ in healthy individuals. Here, we sought to determine the spatial suppression for motion in a larger cohort of 33 patients with schizophrenia controlling for IQ. We found a weakened spatial suppression in patients with schizophrenia, consistent with the previous study (g = 0.47, CI = [0.055, 0.88], combining the previous and our study). For comparison, we performed a meta-analysis on spatial suppression for contrast and found a similar effect size. We found that patients had a lower IQ than controls, but this difference did not explain their weaker spatial suppression. Further, we found that spatial suppression of patients, but not controls increased with their IQ and decreased with age in both groups. Finally, as we estimated lapses of attention, we could estimate motion sensitivity and found that it was decreased in patients. We speculate about possible alterations in neurotransmission that might explain the reduced spatial suppression and sensitivity that we found.

neuroscience↗