Auditory Perceptual History Is Propagated through Alpha Oscillations

Abstract

Highlights d We demonstrate the role of alpha rhythms in the propagation of perceptual history d Auditory decisions were rhythmically biased by stimuli presented 1 or 2 trials back d Bias oscillated at 9 Hz only when successive stimuli occurred in the same ear d Alpha is strongly implicated in predictive perception and working memory formation

Propagation and update of auditory perceptual priors through alpha and theta rhythms

“…A number of EEG studies in vision have reported modulations of decision bias by alpha rhythm (Iemi et al, 2017;Limbach & Corballis, 2016;Samaha et al, 2017) linked to stimulus expectation (Sherman et al, 2016) and perceptual choice history (Lange et al, 2013). Our finding in auditory behaviour that past perceptual information is propagated via alpha oscillations (Ho et al, 2019) is consistent with these results. Specifically, we showed that rhythmic modulations of decision bias at ~9.4 Hz were contingent on the previous target occurring in the same ear as the current one.…”

“…However, these null findings do not necessarily mean that the auditory system samples sensory information differently than vision (VanRullen et al, 2014) and could instead be attributed to the general difficulty of recording alpha oscillations in audition with non-invasive EEG (Weisz et al, 2011). In support of auditory alpha oscillations, intracranial recordings (Lehtelä et al, 1997;Sedley et al, 2015) point unequivocally to the existence of auditory alpha with similar properties as in vision (Weisz et al, 2011), and our own studies (Ho et al, 2017(Ho et al, , 2019 show that alpha oscillations can be readily demonstrated in audition behaviourally.…”

“…We have applied the same method in our previous study (Ho et al, 2019). The response yi (i = 1, 2… n, where n is the total number of trials) to a target at time ti (i.e., the interval from noise onset to target onset in seconds) is modelled by the linear combination of harmonics at each tested frequency (f) as follows:…”

“…However, the mechanisms by which prior sensory information is communicated are still unknown. We (Ho et al, 2019) recently tested the hypothesis that recursive propagation and updating of stored prior experience are related to low-frequency neural oscillations (Arnal & Giraud, 2012;Engel et al, 2001;Friston et al, 2015). Using a novel, time-resolved behavioural method (Landau & Fries, 2012), we showed that auditory stimulus history biased perceptual decisions rhythmically through alpha oscillations at ~9 Hz (Ho et al, 2019).…”

“…In the current study, we applied the same time-resolved behavioural method (Ho et al, 2017(Ho et al, , 2019 to examine how alpha oscillations are engaged in predictive processes under high stimulus expectation. To keep the current experiment comparable to our previous study (Ho et al, 2019), we employed the same task, which required participants to identify the earof-origin of a brief monaural pure-tone target masked by uncorrelated dichotic white noise.…”