Auditory perceptual history is communicated through alpha oscillations

Abstract

1 2 Perception is a proactive, predictive process, where the brain uses accumulated experience to 3 make best guesses about the world to test against sensory data, updating the guesses as new 4 experience is acquired. Using novel behavioral methods, the present study demonstrates the 5 role of alpha rhythms in communicating past perceptual experience. Participants were 6 required to discriminate the ear of origin of brief sinusoidal tones that were presented 7 monaurally at random times within uncorrelated dichotic white noise masks. Responses were 8 not constant over time but oscillated rhythmically towards one or the other ear, at ~9 Hz. 9Importantly, these alpha oscillations occurred only for trials preceded by a target tone to the 10 same ear, either on the previous trial or two trials ago. Tones to the other ear elicited no 11 oscillations. These results suggest that the phase-resetting of oscillations (necessary to 12 measure them by behavioral means) is contingent on the congruency on the previous stimuli. 13Overall the results strongly implicate behavioral oscillations with the processes of serial 14 dependence and hence with memory formation. 15