ArticleThe Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience2017
The Triple-Flash Illusion Reveals a Driving Role of Alpha-Band Reverberations in Visual Perception.
Article in The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers.
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17 citing papers in PubMed.
- Thalamocortical network dynamics can explain visual impulse responses and perceptual echoes.iScience · 2026Article
- Attention- and action-related oscillatory dynamics in a visuomotor network.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2025Article
- Thalamocortical interactions reflecting the intensity of flicker light-induced visual hallucinatory phenomena.Network neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2025Article
- Distinct Contributions of Alpha and Beta Oscillations to Context-Dependent Visual Size Perception.Neuroscience bulletin · 2024Article
- Article
- Advances in human intracranial electroencephalography research, guidelines and good practices.NeuroImage · 2022Review
- No effects of rhythmic visual stimulation on target discrimination: An online alpha entrainment experiment.The European journal of neuroscience · 2022Article
- A guideline for linking brain wave findings to the various aspects of discrete perception.The European journal of neuroscience · 2022Review
- The role of alpha oscillations in temporal binding within and across the senses.Nature human behaviour · 2022Article
- Alpha Activity Reflects the Magnitude of an Individual Bias in Human Perception.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2020Article
- Dynamics of Visual Perceptual Echoes Following Short-Term Visual Deprivation.Cerebral cortex communications · 2020Article
- Two Spatially Distinct Posterior Alpha Sources Fulfill Different Functional Roles in Attention.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2019Article
- Single trial prestimulus oscillations predict perception of the sound-induced flash illusion.Scientific reports · 2019Article
- Temporal Expectation Modulates the Cortical Dynamics of Short-Term Memory.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2018Article
- Individual Alpha Peak Frequency Predicts 10 Hz Flicker Effects on Selective Attention.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2017Article
- Functionally distinct alpha components are differentially modulated by attention and affect behavior.Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.)Article
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3 authors.
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Abstract
The modulatory role of spontaneous brain oscillations on perception of threshold-level stimuli is well established. Here, we provide evidence that alpha-band (∼10 Hz) oscillations not only modulate perception of threshold-level sensory inputs but also can drive perception and generate percepts without a physical stimulus being present. We used the "triple-flash" illusion: Occasional perception of three flashes when only two spatially coincident veridical ones, separated by ∼100 ms, are presented. The illusion was proposed to result from superposition of two hypothetical oscillatory impulse response functions generated in response to each flash: When the delay between flashes matches the period of the oscillation, the superposition enhances a later part of the oscillation that is normally damped; when this enhancement crosses perceptual threshold, a third flash is erroneously perceived (Bowen, 1989). In Experiment 1, we varied stimulus onset asynchrony and validated Bowen's theory: The optimal stimulus onset asynchrony for illusion to occur was correlated, across human subjects (both genders), with the subject-specific impulse response function period determined from a separate EEG experiment. Experiment 2 revealed that prestimulus parietal, but no occipital, alpha EEG phase and power, as well as poststimulus alpha phase-locking, together determine the occurrence of the illusion on a trial-by-trial basis. Thus, oscillatory reverberations create something out of nothing: A third flash where there are only two.
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