PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Rasa Gulbinaite
AU  - Barkin İlhan
AU  - Rufin VanRullen
TI  - The triple-flash illusion reveals a driving role of alpha-band reverberations in visual perception
AID  - 10.1101/093500
DP  - 2016 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 093500
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/12/13/093500.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/12/13/093500.full
AB  - The modulatory role of spontaneous brain oscillations on perception of threshold-level stimuli is well established. Here, we provide evidence that alpha-band (7-14 Hz) oscillations not only modulate but also can drive perception. We used the “triple-flash” illusion: Occasional perception of three flashes when only two spatially-coincident veridical ones are presented, separated by ~100 ms. The illusion was proposed to result from superposition of two hypothetical oscillatory impulse response functions (IRF) generated in response to each flash (Bowen, 1989). In Experiment 1, we varied stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) and validated Bowen's theory: the optimal SOA for illusion to occur was correlated, across subjects, with the subject-specific IRF period. Experiment 2 revealed that pre-stimulus parietal alpha EEG phase and power, as well as post-stimulus alpha phase-locking, together determine the occurrence of the illusion on a trial-by-trial basis. Thus, oscillatory reverberations create something out of nothing – a third flash where there are only two.