Entrainment of local synchrony reveals a causal role for high-beta right frontal oscillations in human visual consciousness

Marine Vernet (1) , Chloé Stengel (1) , Romain Quentin (1) , Julià Amengual (2) , Antoni L Valero-Cabré (3, 1)

1 ICM - Institut du Cerveau = Paris Brain Institute
2 ISC-MJ - Institut des sciences cognitives Marc Jeannerod - Centre de neuroscience cognitive - UMR5229
3 BUSM - Boston University School of Medicine

Prior evidence supports a critical role of oscillatory activity in visual cognition, but are cerebral oscillations simply correlated or causally linked to our ability to consciously acknowledge the presence of a target in our visual field? Here, EEG signals were recorded on humans performing a visual detection task, while they received brief patterns of rhythmic or random transcranial magnetic stimulation (tMS) delivered to the right frontal eye field (fef) prior to the onset of a lateralized target. tMS entrained oscillations, i.e., increased high-beta power and phase alignment (the latter to a higher extent for rhythmic high-beta patterns than random patterns) while also boosting visual detection sensitivity. considering post-hoc only those participants in which rhythmic stimulation enhanced visual detection, the magnitude of high-beta entrainment correlated with left visual performance increases. our study provides evidence in favor of a causal link between high-beta oscillatory activity in the frontal eye field and visual detection. furthermore, it supports future applications of brain stimulation to manipulate local synchrony and improve or restore impaired visual behaviors.

Domaines: Neurosciences; Sciences cognitives

Marine Vernet, Chloé Stengel, Romain Quentin, Julià Amengual, Antoni L Valero-Cabré. Entrainment of local synchrony reveals a causal role for high-beta right frontal oscillations in human visual consciousness. Scientific Reports, 2019, 9 (1), ⟨10.1038/s41598-019-49673-1⟩. ⟨hal-02415179⟩