Rhythmic information sampling in the brain during visual recognition

When we fixate an object, visual information is continuously received on the retina. Several studies observed behavioral oscillations in perceptual sensitivity across such stimulus time, and these fluctuations have been linked to brain oscillations. However, whether specific brain areas show oscillations across stimulus presentation time (i.e., different time points of the stimulus being more or less processed, in a rhythmic fashion) has not been investigated. Here, we revealed random areas of face images at random moments across time and recorded the brain activity of human participants (both male and female) using magnetoencephalography (MEG) while they performed two recognition tasks. This allowed us to quantify how each snapshot of visual information coming from the stimulus is processed across time and across the brain. Oscillations across stimulus time (rhythmic sampling) were mostly visible in early visual areas, at theta, alpha and low beta frequencies. We also found that they contributed to brain activity more than previously investigated rhythmic processing (oscillations in the processing of a single snapshot of visual information). Non-rhythmic sampling was also visible at later latencies across the visual cortex, either in the form of a transient processing of early stimulus time points or of a sustained processing of the whole stimulus. Our results suggest that successive cycles of ongoing brain oscillations process stimulus information incoming at successive moments. Together, these results advance our understanding of the oscillatory neural dynamics associated with visual processing and show the importance of considering the temporal dimension of stimuli when studying visual recognition. Significance StatementSeveral behavioral studies have observed oscillations in perceptual sensitivity over the duration of stimulus presentation, and these fluctuations have been linked to brain oscillations. However, oscillations across stimulus time in the brain have not been studied. Here, we developed a MEG paradigm to quantify how visual information received at each moment during fixation is processed through time and across the brain. We showed that different snapshots of a stimulus are distinctly processed in many brain areas and that these fluctuations are oscillatory in early visual areas. Oscillations across stimulus time were more prevalent than previously studied oscillations across processing time. These results increase our understanding of how neural oscillations interact with the visual processing of temporal stimuli.