Oscil­la­to­ry Phase Dynam­ics in Neur­al Entrain­ment Under­pin Illu­so­ry Per­cepts of Time

Nat­ur­al sounds like speech and music inher­ent­ly vary in tem­po over time. Yet, con­tex­tu­al fac­tors such as vari­a­tions in the sound’s loud­ness or pitch influ­ence per­cep­tion of tem­po­ral rate change towards slow­ing down or speed­ing up.

A new MEG study by Björn Her­rmann, Mol­ly Hen­ry, Maren Grigutsch and Jonas Obleser asked for the neur­al oscil­la­to­ry dynam­ics that under­pin con­text-induced illu­sions in tem­po­ral rate change and found illu­so­ry per­cepts to be linked to changes in the neur­al phase pat­terns of entrained oscil­la­tions while the exact fre­quen­cy of the oscil­la­to­ry response was relat­ed to veridi­cal percepts.

The paper is in press and forth­com­ing in The Jour­nal of Neuroscience.

Update:

Paper is avail­able online.