Rhythmic Modulation of Visual Perception by Continuous Rhythmic Auditory Stimulation.

Anna-Katharina R Bauer,Anna C Nobre,Andrew J Quinn,Freek Van Ede

doi:10.1523/jneurosci.2980-20.2021

Abstract

At any given moment our sensory systems receive multiple, often rhythmic, inputs from the environment. Processing of temporally structured events in one sensory modality can guide both behavioral and neural processing of events in other sensory modalities, but whether this occurs remains unclear. Here, we used human electroencephalography (EEG) to test the cross-modal influences of a continuous auditory frequency-modulated (FM) sound on visual perception and visual cortical activity. We report systematic fluctuations in perceptual discrimination of brief visual stimuli in line with the phase of the FM-sound. We further show that this rhythmic modulation in visual perception is related to an accompanying rhythmic modulation of neural activity recorded over visual areas. Importantly, in our task, perceptual and neural visual modulations occurred without any abrupt and salient onsets in the energy of the auditory stimulation and without any rhythmic structure in the visual stimulus. As such, the results provide a critical validation for the existence and functional role of cross-modal entrainment and demonstrates its utility for organizing the perception of multisensory stimulation in the natural environment.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Our sensory environment is filled with rhythmic structures that are often multi-sensory in nature. Here, we show that the alignment of neural activity to the phase of an auditory frequency-modulated (FM) sound has cross-modal consequences for vision: yielding systematic fluctuations in perceptual discrimination of brief visual stimuli that are mediated by accompanying rhythmic modulation of neural activity recorded over visual areas. These cross-modal effects on visual neural activity and perception occurred without any abrupt and salient onsets in the energy of the auditory stimulation and without any rhythmic structure in the visual stimulus. The current work shows that continuous auditory fluctuations in the natural environment can provide a pacing signal for neural activity and perception across the senses.

Highlights

Our sensory environment is filled with rhythmic structure to which neural activity can become synchronized
Neural entrainment in visual electrodes is related to cyclic modulation of visual perception we found that the degree of neural entrainment in visual electrodes was related to the degree to which visual target sensitivity fluctuated with the 3-Hz FM stimulation (Fig. 5A,B)
Our findings show that visual cortical activity was modulated by the 3-Hz FM stimulation in the absence of any transient changes in stimulus energy or salience in the auditory stream and without a concomitant continuous visual stimulus

Summary

Introduction

Our sensory environment is filled with rhythmic structure to which neural activity can become synchronized This synchronization of neural activity and rhythmic structures in the environment is often referred to as “neural entrainment,” a process by which two self-sustained oscillations become coupled via phase and/or frequency adjustment (Pikovsky et al, 2003; Lakatos et al, 2008; Thut et al, 2011). Low-frequency neural entrainment has been suggested as an important mechanism for enabling cross-modal influences by facilitating the transfer of information across sensory modalities (Van Atteveldt et al, 2014; Simon and Wallace, 2017; Keil and Senkowski, 2018; Lakatos et al, 2019; Bauer et al, 2020). For each visual target time, we computed visual target sensitivity (d’) based on the hit rate (H) from the 45° orientation condition and the false alarm rate (FA) from the 135° orientation condition (CR: correct rejection; M: miss)

Methods

Results

Conclusion