Signal but not noise changes with perceptual learning

Abstract

Perceptual discrimination improves with practice. This ‘perceptual learning’ is often specific to the stimuli presented during training^1,2,3,4,5, indicating that practice may alter the response characteristics of cortical sensory neurons^6,7. Although much is known about how learning modifies cortical circuits⁸, it remains unclear how these changes relate to behaviour. Different theories assume that practice improves discrimination by enhancing the signal^1,9,10, diminishing internal noise^11,12 or both¹³. Here, to distinguish among these alternatives, we fashioned sets of faces and textures whose signal strength could be varied, and we trained observers to identify these patterns embedded in noise. Performance increased by up to 400% across several sessions over several days. Comparisons of human performance to that of an ideal discriminator showed that learning increased the efficiency with which observers encoded task-relevant information. Observer response consistency, measured by a double-pass technique in which identical stimuli are shown twice in each experimental session^14,15, did not change during training, showing that learning had no effect on internal noise. These results indicate that perceptual learning may enhance signal strength, and provide important constraints for theories of learning.