Abstract
We applied high-density EEG to examine steady-state visual evoked potentials (SSVEPs) during a perceptual/semantic stimulus repetition design. SSVEPs are evoked oscillatory cortical responses at the same frequency as visual stimuli flickered at this frequency. In repetition designs, stimuli are presented twice with the repetition being task irrelevant. The cortical processing of the second stimulus is commonly characterized by decreased neuronal activity (repetition suppression). The behavioral consequences of stimulus repetition were examined in a companion reaction time pre-study using the same experimental design as the EEG study. During the first presentation of a stimulus, we confronted participants with drawings of familiar object images or object words, respectively. The second stimulus was either a repetition of the same object image (perceptual repetition; PR) or an image depicting the word presented during the first presentation (semantic repetition; SR)—all flickered at 15 Hz to elicit SSVEPs. The behavioral study revealed priming effects in both experimental conditions (PR and SR). In the EEG, PR was associated with repetition suppression of SSVEP amplitudes at left occipital and repetition enhancement at left temporal electrodes. In contrast, SR was associated with SSVEP suppression at left occipital and central electrodes originating in bilateral postcentral and occipital gyri, right middle frontal and right temporal gyrus. The conclusion of the presented study is twofold. First, SSVEP amplitudes do not only index perceptual aspects of incoming sensory information but also semantic aspects of cortical object representation. Second, our electrophysiological findings can be interpreted as neuronal underpinnings of perceptual and semantic priming.
Highlights
Bottom-up processing of visual object information goes from simple feature representations (Tanaka 1993) to activating object representation networks and subsequent object recognition
The first aim of the study was to show that state visual evoked potentials (SSVEPs) amplitudes do index the processing of perceptual aspects of incoming sensory information and semantic aspects of cortical object representations
The second aim was to specify cortical areas that are associated with the processing of semantic features of objects using the SSVEP
Summary
Bottom-up processing of visual object information goes from simple feature representations (Tanaka 1993) to activating object representation networks and subsequent object recognition. The findings that stimulus flicker can entrain activity beyond the stimulated sensory area (Srinivasan et al 2007), that the stimulus flicker frequency can modulate performance in cognitive tasks (Thut et al 2011; Williams et al 2006), that the brain retains a memory trace of the flicker frequency of tagged items (Wimber et al 2012), and that the entrained oscillations continue to persist for a few circles after the end of stimulation (Halbleib et al 2012; Ross et al 2005) speak for the involvement of broader networks that operate via endogenous responses (for a review see e.g., Thut et al 2011; Zoefel et al 2018). The present study aims to shed further light on the role of SSVEPs in processing semantic aspects of objects by using a stimulus repetition design
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