Attention and Neural Oscillations in Perceptual Integration

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Sensations and perceptions of the world are typically accurate, especially with focused attention. However, they are sometimes inaccurate, which can lead to damaging consequences. Understanding how the human brain processes sensory information to form coherent and representative perceptions of the world is therefore scientifically important and has broad implications for national health (e.g., radiologists detecting a tumor), security and defense (e.g., accurately responding to a perceived threat), and general safety and well-being (e.g., correctly perceiving the color of a traffic light). With funding from the National Science Foundation, this research assesses how attention and associated changes in brain activity facilitate the successful combination of different types of sensory information into accurate perceptions. By focusing on errors in perceptual binding, such as misperceiving the color of one object as being the color of another nearby object, these studies will provide insights into the brain states that allow perception to proceed with precision and those that cause perception to fail. In addition to advancing scientific knowledge about the brain, this research will provide training opportunities to many students, including high school and undergraduate students as well as underrepresented students in the STEM fields. The proposed experiments will examine the cognitive and neural mechanisms involved with visual feature binding and multisensory integration. The investigators will use converging methods to test whether modulations of attention and neural oscillations affect sensory integration. These methods include structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to measure neural activity during successful and unsuccessful visual feature binding and multisensory integration, electroencephalography (EEG) and fast signal optical imaging to measure changes in oscillatory neural activity prior to and after sensory integration, and rhythmic transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to alter sensory integration by modulating and inducing phase-controlled neural oscillations. These studies will shed light on how sensory information that is processed in discrete regions of the human brain might be combined through neural oscillations to produce coherent representations of the external world. They will also provide a better understanding of failures in perception. By examining how different brain regions integrate information through synchronized neural activity, these studies may also provide important clues for generating strategies and rehabilitative tools for individuals with a variety of congenital, developmental, and acquired impairments that affect sensory processing.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.