Behavioral oscillations: hidden temporal dynamics in visual attention

Abstract

Neuronal oscillations are widely known to contribute to various aspects of cognition, but most associated evidence is based upon post-hoc relationships between recorded brain dynamics and behavior. It remains largely unknown whether brain oscillations causally mediate behavior and can be directly manifested in behavioral performances. Interestingly, several recent psychophysical studies, by employing a time-resolved measurement, revealed rhythmic fluctuations (Landau & Fries, 2012; Fiebelkorn et al., 2013) and even neurophysiologically relevant spectrotemporal dynamics (Song et al., 2014) directly in behavior. In this talk, I will present our recent studies in which we examined fine temporal dynamics of behavioral performances in various classical visual paradigms. Together, the results suggest that behavioral data, instead of being sluggish and unable to reflect underlying neuronal dynamics, actually contain rich temporal structures (i.e., ‘behavioral oscillations’, Song et al., 2014), in a somewhat neurophysiology relevant manner. I propose that these new ‘behavioral oscillations’ findings, in combination with well-established neuronal oscillation work, speak to an oscillation-based temporal organization mechanism in visual attention.