Learned associations constrain anticipatory visual dynamics and enhance sensory and motor readiness to facilitate perceptual decisions

Learned cue target associations can guide attention to facilitate perceptual decision making, yet how they shape the content and dynamics of neural activity, and whether this facilitation reflects anticipatory preparation, post-target sensory enhancement, or both, remains unclear. Here, we used magnetoencephalography while participants made living/nonliving judgments about visual objects (e.g., cat/violin) with left- or right-hand button presses. Cue category associations were established through repeated pairings: predictive cues always preceded one target category, whereas uninformative cues preceded both categories equally often. Predictive cues facilitated behavioral responses despite limited explicit awareness of the learned associations. Representational similarity analysis showed that prediction preactivated target-specific representations in the visual cortex resembling target evoked activity before target onset. Prediction also elicited anticipatory, response specific motor beta suppression. Together, these findings supported anticipatory preparation, with little evidence of enhanced posttarget visual specificity. Posttarget visual specificity and anticipatory motor preparation independently predicted response speed, with hierarchical drift diffusion modeling linking greater visual specificity to faster evidence accumulation and stronger motor preparation to shorter nondecision time (a model parameter reflecting sensory encoding and motor execution). Beyond representational content, prediction also constrained the evolution of anticipatory visual population activity, and more constrained, stable early visual trajectories predicted faster responses. These population dynamics were associated with faster evidence accumulation, lower decision thresholds, and shorter non-decision time. Together, these findings suggest that associative memory facilitates perceptual decisions by shaping the content and dynamics of anticipatory neural activity, with partially dissociable contributions from visual processing and motor preparation.