Do ongoing neural oscillations influence objective visual acuity, perceptual bias, or decision bias?

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Niko Busch
• Subject Area: Biological Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience ; Human Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience
• Term: from 2018 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 397060357

• Final Report Year: 2023

Final Report Abstract

This project seeks to clarify the mechanisms by which spontaneous brain rhythms, specifically alpha oscillations as measured by EEG, interact with visual perception and task performance. Previous studies have shown that the power of ongoing alpha oscillations at the moment of stimulus presentation correlates with the correct detection of near-threshold stimuli. The conventional interpretation of this finding is that alpha oscillations, and thus neural excitability, modulate the accuracy of visual perception, that is, the ability to distinguish between signal and noise. However, recent findings suggest that alpha oscillations may modulate bias in observers' perceptual decisions. The empirical basis for this far-reaching reinterpretation of the functional role of spontaneous brain activity needs to be substantiated. Furthermore, a bias in signal detection measures can have two very different underlying causes: perceptual bias, which affects the subjective appearance of signal and noise, or decision bias, which affects the strategic preference for a response option. Previous studies have been unable to distinguish between these alternatives. The experimental work utilized psychophysics, computational modeling, and analysis of EEG recordings in humans to test effects of pre-stimulus alpha power on behavioral performance. Our results corroborated the view that ongoing regulation of arousal and wakefulness likely involves fluctuating alpha wave patterns tied closely to neural excitability. Moreover, we confirmed that the specific effect of ongoing excitability fluctuations can be described as a shift in perceptual bias corresponding to a subtle change in the subjective appearance of the visual environment. Results from this research further the current understanding of how the brain’s background electrical rhythms may naturally modulate vigilance and visual function.

Publications

• Moment-to-Moment Fluctuations in Neuronal Excitability Bias Subjective Perception Rather than Strategic Decision-Making. eneuro, 5(3), ENEURO.0430-17.2018.
  Iemi, Luca & Busch, Niko A.
  
• Multiple mechanisms link prestimulus neural oscillations to sensory responses. eLife, 8.
  Iemi, Luca; Busch, Niko A.; Laudini, Annamaria; Haegens, Saskia; Samaha, Jason; Villringer, Arno & Nikulin, Vadim V.
  
• Neural oscillations, excitability and perceptual decisions. Talk at the annual meeting of Vision Sciences Society (VSS), St. Pete Beach, Florida, USA. Within the symposium “Rhythms of the brain, rhythms of perception” co-organized by Ben Hamed S., Busch N.A. & Fiebelkorn I.
  Busch, N.A.
  
• Single trial prestimulus oscillations predict perception of the sound-induced flash illusion. Scientific Reports, 9(1).
  Kaiser, Mathis; Senkowski, Daniel; Busch, Niko A.; Balz, Johanna & Keil, Julian
  
• Spontaneous Brain Oscillations and Perceptual Decision-Making. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 24(8), 639-653.
  Samaha, Jason; Iemi, Luca; Haegens, Saskia & Busch, Niko A.
  
• Oscillatory Correlates of Intentional Forgetting: The Role of Theta and Alpha Power in Item-Method Directed Forgetting. eneuro, 8(5), ENEURO.0022-21.2021.
  Scholz, Sebastian; Dutke, Stephan & Busch, Niko A.
  
• Respiration aligns perception with neural excitability. eLife, 10.
  Kluger, Daniel S.; Balestrieri, Elio; Busch, Niko A. & Gross, Joachim
  
• Alpha-band lateralization and microsaccades elicited by exogenous cues do not track attentional orienting. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
  Balestrieri, Elio; Michel, René & Busch, Niko A.
  
• Early neural potentiation to centrally and peripherally presented fear‐conditioned faces. Psychophysiology, 60(4).
  Bruchmann, Maximilian; Fahnemann, Kristin; Schindler, Sebastian; Busch, Niko A. & Straube, Thomas
  
• Effects of task load, spatial attention, and trait anxiety on neuronal responses to fearful and neutral faces. Psychophysiology, 59(11).
  Schindler, Sebastian; Richter, Theresa Sofie; Bruchmann, Maximilian; Busch, Niko A. & Straube, Thomas
  
• Rhythms in Cognition: Revisiting the Evidence. Symposium organized at the International Conference of Cognitive Neuroscience, Helsinki, Finland
  Ruzzoli, M.; Keitel, C.; Busch, N.; Benwell, C. & Dugué, L.
  
• Spontaneous Alpha-Band Oscillations Bias Subjective Contrast Perception. The Journal of Neuroscience, 42(25), 5058-5069.
  Balestrieri, Elio & Busch, Niko A.
  
• Contralateral delay activity and alpha lateralization reflect retinotopic and screen-centered reference frames in visual memory. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
  Mössing, Wanja A.; Schroeder, Svea C. Y.; Biel, Anna Lena & Busch, Niko A.
  
• Contralateral delay activity, but not alpha lateralization, indexes prioritization of information for working memory storage. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 85(3), 718-733.
  Schroeder, Svea C. Y.; Aagten-Murphy, David & Busch, Niko A.
  
• Fearful faces straight ahead or in the periphery: Early neuronal responses independently of trait anxiety.. Emotion, 23(6), 1687-1701.
  Schindler, Sebastian; Meyer, Swenna; Bruchmann, Maximilian; Busch, Niko A. & Straube, Thomas