Gestalt perception is associated with reduced parietal beta oscillations

Abstract

The ability to perceive composite objects as a whole is fundamental for visual perception in a complex and cluttered natural environment. This ability may be mediated by increased communication between neural representations of distinct object elements, and has been linked to increased synchronization of oscillatory brain activity in the gamma band. Previous studies of perceptual grouping either guided attention between local and global aspects of a given stimulus or manipulated its physical properties to achieve grouped and ungrouped perceptual conditions. In contrast to those studies, we fully matched the physical properties underlying global and local percepts using a bistable stimulus that causes the viewer to perceive either local motion of multiple elements or global motion of two illusory shapes without any external change. To test the synchronization hypothesis we recorded brain activity with EEG, while human participants viewed the stimulus and reported changes in their perception. In contrast to previous findings we show that power of the beta-band was lower during perception of global Gestalt than during that of local elements. Source localization places these differences in the posterior parietal cortex, overlapping with a site previously associated with both attention and Gestalt perception. These findings reveal a role of parietal beta-band activity in internally, rather than externally or attention-driven processes of Gestalt perception. They also add to the growing evidence for shared neural substrates of attention and Gestalt perception, both being linked to parietal cortex.