Figure 1.

Central idea of the study and experimental design. A, Typically, preactivated prior knowledge related to the content of a prediction must be maintained as the brain will not know exactly when it will be needed. If there is a reliable neural code that maps between content and neural activity, maintained activated prior knowledge should lead to brain signals that are themselves predictable over time (here the brain signals are depicted as identical, although the relation between past and future will almost certainly be much more complicated). B, Exemplary stimulus presentation in Face blocks (top) and in House blocks (bottom). Face and House icons on the left indicate Face and House blocks, respectively. Middle, Depiction of stimulus categories and timing. The beginning of the response time window is indicated by the hand icon. Red horizontal bars mark the analysis interval. Figure elements obtained from OpenCliparts Library (http://www.openclipart.org) and modified.