Just a phase? Causal probing reveals spurious phasic dependence of sustained attention.
Just a phase? Causal probing reveals spurious phasic dependence of sustained attention.
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只是一个阶段？
DOI：
10.1016/j.neuroimage.2023.120477
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发表时间：
2024
期刊：
影响因子：
5.7
通讯作者：
Vinao-Carl M
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Vinao-Carl M
十多年来，电生理学研究已经报道了注意力/知觉与自发脑振荡时相之间的相关性。到目前为止，这些发现被解释为大脑使用神经振荡来采样和预测即将到来的刺激的证据。然而，来自模拟的证据表明，分析伪品也可能导致虚假的刺激前振荡，似乎可以预测未来的大脑反应。为了解决这种差异，我们进行了一项实验，在这项实验中，视觉刺激被及时呈现到自发的阿尔法和西塔振荡的特定阶段。这使我们能够从因果关系上探索正在进行的神经活动在视觉处理中的作用，而不依赖于刺激诱发的动力学。我们的发现不支持自发的阿尔法/西塔节律和行为之间的因果联系。然而，使用黄金标准的时频分析，theta相位和行为之间的虚假关联出现在离线状态。这些发现提醒人们，在使用非因果分析方法推断神经活动和行为之间的因果关系时，应谨慎行事。
For over a decade, electrophysiological studies have reported correlations between attention / perception and the phase of spontaneous brain oscillations. To date, these findings have been interpreted as evidence that the brain uses neural oscillations to sample and predict upcoming stimuli. Yet, evidence from simulations have shown that analysis artefacts could also lead to spurious pre-stimulus oscillations that appear to predict future brain responses. To address this discrepancy, we conducted an experiment in which visual stimuli were presented in time to specific phases of spontaneous alpha and theta oscillations. This allowed us to causally probe the role of ongoing neural activity in visual processing independent of the stimulus-evoked dynamics. Our findings did not support a causal link between spontaneous alpha / theta rhythms and behaviour. However, spurious correlations between theta phase and behaviour emerged offline using gold-standard time-frequency analyses. These findings are a reminder that care should be taken when inferring causal relationships between neural activity and behaviour using acausal analysis methods.