Alpha Power Predicts Persistence of Bistable Perception

Perception is strongly affected by the intrinsic state of the brain, which controls the propensity to either maintain a particular perceptual interpretation or switch to another. To understand the mechanisms underlying the spontaneous drive of the brain to explore alternative interpretations of unch...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Scientific reports 2017-07, Vol.7 (1), p.5208-11, Article 5208
Main Authors: Piantoni, Giovanni, Romeijn, Nico, Gomez-Herrero, German, Van Der Werf, Ysbrand D., Van Someren, Eus J. W.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
631/378/1385/1815
631/378/2613/2616
631/378/2649/1310
631/378/2649/1723
631/477/2811
Adult
Alpha Rhythm - physiology
Attention
Brain - physiology
Cognitive ability
EEG
Electroencephalography
Female
Humanities and Social Sciences
Humans
Male
multidisciplinary
Oscillations
Parieto-occipital sulcus
Perception
Photic Stimulation - methods
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Sleep deprivation
Synchronization
Task Performance and Analysis
Visual perception
Visual Perception - physiology
Young Adult
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Summary:Perception is strongly affected by the intrinsic state of the brain, which controls the propensity to either maintain a particular perceptual interpretation or switch to another. To understand the mechanisms underlying the spontaneous drive of the brain to explore alternative interpretations of unchanging stimuli, we repeatedly recorded high-density EEG after normal sleep and after sleep deprivation while participants observed a Necker cube image and reported the durations of the alternating representations of their bistable perception. We found that local alpha power around the parieto-occipital sulcus within the first second after the emergence of a perceptual representation predicted the fate of its duration. An experimentally induced increase in alpha power by means of sleep deprivation increased the average duration of individual representations. Taken together, these findings show that high alpha power promotes the stability of a perceptual representation and suppresses switching to the alternative. The observations support the hypothesis that synchronization of alpha oscillations across a wide neuronal network promotes the maintenance and stabilization of its current perceptual representation. Elevated alpha power could also be key to the poorly understood cognitive deficits, that typically accompany sleep deprivation, such as the loss of mental flexibility and lapses of responsiveness.
ISSN:2045-2322
2045-2322
DOI:10.1038/s41598-017-05610-8