Auditory Perceptual History Is Propagated through Alpha Oscillations

Summary

Perception is a proactive, “predictive” process, in which the brain relies, at least in part, on accumulated experience to make best guesses about the world to test against sensory data, updating the guesses as new experience is acquired. Using novel behavioral methods, the present study demonstrates the role of alpha rhythms in communicating past perceptual experience. Participants were required to discriminate the ear of origin of brief sinusoidal tones that were presented monaurally at random times within a burst of uncorrelated dichotic white noise masks. Performance was not constant but varied with delay after noise onset in an oscillatory manner at about 9 Hz (alpha rhythm). Importantly, oscillations occurred only for trials preceded by a target tone to the same ear, either on the previous trial or two trials back. These results suggest that communication of perceptual history generates neural oscillations within specific perceptual circuits, strongly implicating behavioral oscillations in predictive perception and with formation of working memory.

Graphical Abstract

Highlights

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  We demonstrate the role of alpha rhythms in the propagation of perceptual history

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  Auditory decisions were rhythmically biased by stimuli presented 1 or 2 trials back

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  Bias oscillated at ∼9 Hz only when successive stimuli occurred in the same ear

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  Alpha is strongly implicated in predictive perception and working memory formation

Abstract

Using novel behavioral methods, Ho et al. show that perceptual decisions in audition are rhythmically biased by previous stimuli presented up to two trials back. The oscillations at ∼9 Hz occurred only when a stimulus had previously been presented to the same ear, strongly implicating alpha in predictive perception and working memory formation.