The triple-flash illusion reveals a driving role of alpha-band reverberations in visual perception

Gulbinaite, Rasa; İlhan, Barkın; VanRullen, Rufin

doi:10.1101/093500

Cited by 19 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 54 publications

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“…100 ms; Bowen, ). Consistent with this idea, the optimal stimulus onset asynchrony for this illusion has been found to correlate with individual peak alpha frequency in parietal, but not occipital cortex (Gulbinaite et al ., ). This finding suggests that alpha oscillations can induce experiences of visual stimuli that have not been presented, further supporting the positive association between alpha and visual perception.…”

Section: The Characters Of Alphamentioning

confidence: 97%

The many characters of visual alpha oscillations

Clayton

Yeung

Kadosh

2017

Eur J of Neuroscience

190

160

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A central feature of human brain activity is the alpha rhythm: a 7-13 Hz oscillation observed most notably over occipitoparietal brain regions during periods of eyes-closed rest. Alpha oscillations covary with changes in visual processing and have been associated with a broad range of neurocognitive functions. In this article, we review these associations and suggest that alpha oscillations can be thought to exhibit at least five distinct 'characters': those of the inhibitor, perceiver, predictor, communicator and stabiliser. In short, while alpha oscillations are strongly associated with reductions in visual attention, they also appear to play important roles in regulating the timing and temporal resolution of perception. Furthermore, alpha oscillations are strongly associated with top-down control and may facilitate transmission of predictions to visual cortex. This is in addition to promoting communication between frontal and posterior brain regions more generally, as well as maintaining ongoing perceptual states. We discuss why alpha oscillations might associate with such a broad range of cognitive functions and suggest ways in which these diverse associations can be studied experimentally.

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Section: The Characters Of Alphamentioning

confidence: 97%

The many characters of visual alpha oscillations

Clayton

Yeung

Kadosh

2017

Eur J of Neuroscience

190

160

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“…Recent studies have suggested that pre-stimulus alpha activity may reflect the criterion used to commit a specific response and may hence reflect a perceptual or decisional bias (Limbach & Corballis, 2016;Iemi, Chaumon, Crouzet, & Busch, 2017;Craddock, Poliakoff, El-deredy, Klepousniotou, & Lloyd, 2017;Iemi & Busch, 2018;Rohe, Ehlis, & Noppeney, 2019). Along such a role in perceptual decision making, alpha activity was shown to correlate with subjective awareness (Benwell, et al, 2017;Lange, Oostenveld, & Fries, 2013;Gulbinaite, İlhan, & VanRullen, 2017) and decision confidence (Samaha, Iemi, & Postle, 2017;Wöstmann, Waschke, & Obleser, 2018). Still, it remains unclear whether pre-stimulus activity indeed reflects an individual's intrinsic bias, or reflects processes that facilitate veridical sensory encoding, as previous work did not unambiguously quantify the relation of spontaneous brain activity to idiosyncratic and temporary biases.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Alpha Activity Reflects the Magnitude of an Individual Bias in Human Perception

Grabot

Kayser

2019

Preprint

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Biases in sensory perception can arise from both experimental manipulations and personal traitlike features. These idiosyncratic biases and their neural underpinnings are often overlooked in studies on the physiology underlying perception. A potential candidate mechanism mediating such idiosyncratic biases is spontaneous alpha activity, a prominent brain rhythm known to influence the processing of upcoming information in general. Using a time perception task, we here tested the hypothesis that alpha power reflects the compensation for an idiosyncratic bias. Importantly, to understand the interplay between idiosyncratic biases and contextual (temporary) biases induced by experimental manipulations, we quantified this relation before and after temporal recalibration. Using EEG recordings in human participants, we found that pre-stimulus alpha power correlates with the tendency to respond relative to an own idiosyncratic bias, with stronger alpha leading to responses matching the bias. In contrast, alpha power did not predict response correctness. These results also held after temporal recalibration and were specific to the alpha band, suggesting that alpha power indexes the cognitive effort to overcome an individual's momentary bias in perception. Significance statementThe brain is a biased organ, frequently generating systematically distorted percepts of the world, leading each of us to evolve in our own subjective reality. However, such biases are often overlooked or considered noise when studying the neural mechanisms underlying perception. We show that spontaneous alpha band activity predicts the degree of biasedness of human choices in a time perception task, suggesting that alpha power indexes the effort needed to overcome an individual's idiosyncratic bias. This result provides a window onto the neural underpinnings of subjective perception, and offers the possibility to quantify or manipulate such priors in future studies.

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“…More recently, Milton and Pleydell‐Pearce (Milton & Pleydell‐Pearce, ) provided renewed evidence accounting for the role of alpha phase in perception of visual synchrony (see also VanRullen & Koch, ). Another piece of evidence which relates spontaneous oscillations in the alpha band and temporal perception comes from studies which correlate the peak frequency in the alpha band with visual temporal resolution (Gulbinaite, İlhan, & VanRullen, ; Samaha & Postle, ). Specifically, Samaha and Postle () showed that individual alpha frequency (IAF) correlates with two‐flash fusion thresholds (i.e., perception of two flashes as one when they are presented within the individual alpha cycle).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…More recently, Gulbinaite et al. () demostrated that individual alpha phase and power correlate with the perception of the triple flash illusion (perception of a third flash when only two flashes are presented). Collectively, these results suggest that the speed of alpha oscillations can reflect the temporal resolution of visual perception (Gulbinaite et al., ; Milton & Pleydell‐Pearce, ; Samaha & Postle, ; Varela et al., ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The phase of pre‐stimulus brain oscillations correlates with cross‐modal synchrony perception

Ikumi

Torralba

Ruzzoli

et al. 2018

Eur J of Neuroscience

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In everyday life multisensory events, such as a glass crashing on the floor, the different sensory inputs are often experienced as simultaneous, despite the sensory processing of sound and sight within the brain are temporally misaligned. This lack of cross‐modal synchrony is the unavoidable consequence of different light and sound speeds, and their different neural transmission times in the corresponding sensory pathways. Hence, cross‐modal synchrony must be reconstructed during perception. It has been suggested that spontaneous fluctuations in neural excitability might be involved in the temporal organisation of sensory events during perception and account for variability in behavioural performance. Here, we addressed the relationship between ongoing brain oscillations and the perception of cross‐modal simultaneity. Participants performed an audio‐visual simultaneity judgement task while their EEG was recorded. We focused on pre‐stimulu activity, and found that the phase of neural oscillations at 13 ± 2 Hz 200 ms prior to the stimulus correlated with subjective simultaneity of otherwise identical sound‐flash events. Remarkably, the correlation between EEG phase and behavioural report occurred in the absence of concomitant changes in EEG amplitude. The probability of simultaneity perception fluctuated significantly as a function of pre‐stimulus phase, with the largest perceptual variation being accounted for phase angles nearly 180º apart. This pattern was strongly reliable for sound‐flash pairs but not for flash‐sound pairs. Overall, these findings suggest that the phase of ongoing brain activity might underlie internal states of the observer that influence cross‐modal temporal organisation between the senses and, in turn, subjective synchrony.

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The triple-flash illusion reveals a driving role of alpha-band reverberations in visual perception

Cited by 19 publications

References 54 publications

The many characters of visual alpha oscillations

The many characters of visual alpha oscillations

Alpha Activity Reflects the Magnitude of an Individual Bias in Human Perception

The phase of pre‐stimulus brain oscillations correlates with cross‐modal synchrony perception

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