We showed that early visual cortex performs pattern completion by recreating a stimulus sequence after only a subset of the visual sequence is provided. Interestingly, this ‘pre-played’ sequence was temporally faster compared to the actual sequence and linked to behavioral performance during perception.

Here, we combined human magnetoencephalography (MEG) with multivariate decoding techniques to resolve the timing of neural signals induced by expectations. We found that, when auditory cues induced the expectation of a grating of a particular orientation, this evoked a neural template of the expected grating already before the grating was presented. These results suggest a mechanism by which the brain predicts future sensory stimuli in order to enhance perception.