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Rhythmic modulation of visual perception by continuous rhythmic auditory stimulation

View ORCID ProfileAnna-Katharina R. Bauer, Freek van Ede, View ORCID ProfileAndrew J. Quinn, Anna C. Nobre
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.10.30.362467
Anna-Katharina R. Bauer
1Department of Experimental Psychology, Brain and Cognition Lab, University of Oxford, OX2 6GG, UK
2Oxford Centre for Human Brain Activity, Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
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  • ORCID record for Anna-Katharina R. Bauer
  • For correspondence: anna-katharina.matke-bauer@psy.ox.ac.uk
Freek van Ede
2Oxford Centre for Human Brain Activity, Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
3Institute for Brain and Behavior Amsterdam, Department of Experimental and Applied Psychology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, 1081BT, The Netherlands
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Andrew J. Quinn
1Department of Experimental Psychology, Brain and Cognition Lab, University of Oxford, OX2 6GG, UK
2Oxford Centre for Human Brain Activity, Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
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Anna C. Nobre
1Department of Experimental Psychology, Brain and Cognition Lab, University of Oxford, OX2 6GG, UK
2Oxford Centre for Human Brain Activity, Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
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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 behavioural and neural processing of events in other sensory modalities, but how 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 organising the perception of multisensory stimulation in the natural environment.

Highlights

  • cross-modal influences are mediated by the synchronisation of neural oscillations

  • visual performance fluctuates in line with the phase of a frequency-modulated sound

  • cross-modal entrainment of neural activity predicts fluctuation in visual performance

  • cross-modal entrainment organises perception of multisensory stimuli

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-ND 4.0 International license.
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Posted October 31, 2020.
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Rhythmic modulation of visual perception by continuous rhythmic auditory stimulation
Anna-Katharina R. Bauer, Freek van Ede, Andrew J. Quinn, Anna C. Nobre
bioRxiv 2020.10.30.362467; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.10.30.362467
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Rhythmic modulation of visual perception by continuous rhythmic auditory stimulation
Anna-Katharina R. Bauer, Freek van Ede, Andrew J. Quinn, Anna C. Nobre
bioRxiv 2020.10.30.362467; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.10.30.362467

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