Rhythmic fluctuations of saccadic reaction time arising from visual competition

Abstract

Recent research indicates that attentional stimulus selection could be a rhythmic process. In monkey, neurons in V4 and IT exhibit rhythmic spiking activity in the theta range in response to a stimulus. When two stimuli are presented together, the rhythmic neuronal responses to each occur in anti-phase, a result indicative of competitive interactions. In addition, it was recently demonstrated that these alternating oscillations in monkey V4 modulate the speed of saccadic responses to a target flashed on one of the two competing stimuli. Here, we replicate a similar behavioral task in humans (7 participants, each performed 4000 trials) and report a pattern of results consistent with the monkey findings: saccadic response times fluctuate in the theta range (6 Hz), with opposite phase for targets flashed on distinct competing stimuli.