Identifying neural correlates underlying auditive and visual hysteresis with EEG
Wed-Main hall - Z2b-Poster 3-8906
Presented by: Tim Redepenning
Our perception can be influenced by our immediate perceptual past. If we persist in a former percept, that is, if perception of a current stimulus is pushed towards the former one, this is termed hysteresis. Hysteresis has been demonstrated in the perceptual and motor domain. The current study investigated neural correlates of perceptual hysteresis across two modalities – auditive and visual. In two experiments, ambiguous Necker cubes and Shepard tones were gradually shifted to evoke perceptual hysteresis while we recorded neural activity via EEG. Participants (n=31, mean age=25.1a, 13 females) indicated their percept of the stimuli by answering a yes-or-no-question on a keyboard. We varied the stimulus order by presenting them either in an ascending or a descending sequence. In both perceptual modalities we analysed the response data with a GLMM with a logistic link function. For the Necker cubes we found significant main effects for the stimulus, z=11.426, p<.001, R2β*=.014, and for order, z=-2.279, p=.022, R2β*=.001. Likewise, the GLMM for the Shepard tones showed significant main effects for pitch difference between first and second tone, z=-38.602, p<.001, R2β*=.040, and for order, z=-30.707, p<.001, R2β*=.021, indicating that perception in both domains was significantly influenced by the order of the stimulus sequence. Therefore, our behavioural results confirm previous findings and meet the prerequisites to continue with the analysis of the EEG data, which is currently under progress.
Keywords: brain, perceptual hysteresis, ambiguous stimuli, multistability, bistability, EEG, neural response