Abstract
It is well-established that power modulations of alpha oscillations (8-14 Hz) reflect the retinotopic organization of visuospatial attention. To what extend this organization generalizes to other sensory modalities is a topic of ongoing scientific debate. Here, we designed an auditory paradigm eliminating any visual input in which participants were required to attend to upcoming sounds from one of 24 loudspeakers arranged in a horizontal circular array around the head. Maintaining the location of an auditory cue was associated with a topographically modulated distribution of posterior alpha power resembling the findings known from visual attention. Alpha power modulations in all electrodes allowed us to predict the sound location in the horizontal plane using a forward encoding model. Importantly, this prediction was still possible, albeit weaker, when derived from the horizontal electrooculogram capturing saccadic behavior. We conclude that attending to an auditory target engages oculomotor and visual cortical areas in a topographic manner akin to the retinotopic organization associated with visual attention suggesting that the spatial distribution of alpha power reflects the supramodal organization of egocentric space.
Competing Interest Statement
The authors have declared no competing interest.
