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Spontaneous pre‐stimulus oscillatory activity shapes the way we look: A concurrent imaging and eye‐movement study
Author(s) -
Paoletti Davide,
Braun Christoph,
Vargo Elisabeth Julie,
Zoest Wieske
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
european journal of neuroscience
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.346
H-Index - 206
eISSN - 1460-9568
pISSN - 0953-816X
DOI - 10.1111/ejn.14285
Subject(s) - magnetoencephalography , frontal eye fields , stimulus (psychology) , psychology , neuroscience , saccadic masking , eye movement , posterior parietal cortex , saccade , visual search , cognitive psychology , electroencephalography
Previous behavioural studies have accrued evidence that response time plays a critical role in determining whether selection is influenced by stimulus saliency or target template. In the present work, we investigated to what extent the variations in timing and consequent oculomotor controls are influenced by spontaneous variations in pre‐stimulus alpha oscillations. We recorded simultaneously brain activity using magnetoencephalography ( MEG ) and eye movements while participants performed a visual search task. Our results show that slower saccadic reaction times were predicted by an overall stronger alpha power in the 500 ms time window preceding the stimulus onset, while weaker alpha power was a signature of faster responses. When looking separately at performance for fast and slow responses, we found evidence for two specific sources of alpha activity predicting correct versus incorrect responses. When saccades were quickly elicited, errors were predicted by stronger alpha activity in posterior areas, comprising the angular gyrus in the temporal‐parietal junction ( TPJ ) and possibly the lateral intraparietal area ( LIP ). Instead, when participants were slower in responding, an increase of alpha power in frontal eye fields ( FEF ), supplementary eye fields ( SEF ) and dorsolateral pre‐frontal cortex ( DLPFC ) predicted erroneous saccades. In other words, oculomotor accuracy in fast responses was predicted by alpha power differences in more posterior areas, while the accuracy in slow responses was predicted by alpha power differences in frontal areas, in line with the idea that these areas may be differentially related to stimulus‐driven and goal‐driven control of selection.