Coupled oscillations enable rapid temporal recalibration to audiovisual asynchrony

Lennert et al. use magnetoencephalography in human participants to show that individual recalibration behavior in response to audiovisual asynchrony is related to subject-specific properties of fast oscillations in the auditory cortex. Their findings shed light on how brain oscillations contribute to forming unified percepts across senses. The brain naturally resolves the challenge of integrating auditory and visual signals produced by the same event despite different physical propagation speeds and neural processing latencies. Temporal recalibration manifests in human perception to realign incoming signals across the senses. Recent behavioral studies show it is a fast-acting phenomenon, relying on the most recent exposure to audiovisual asynchrony. Here we show that the physiological mechanism of rapid, context-dependent recalibration builds on interdependent pre-stimulus cortical rhythms in sensory brain regions. Using magnetoencephalography, we demonstrate that individual recalibration behavior is related to subject-specific properties of fast oscillations (>35 Hz) nested within a slower alpha rhythm (8-12 Hz) in auditory cortex. We also show that the asynchrony of a previously presented audiovisual stimulus pair alters the preferred coupling phase of these fast oscillations along the alpha cycle, with a resulting phase-shift amounting to the temporal recalibration observed behaviorally. These findings suggest that cross-frequency coupled oscillations contribute to forming unified percepts across senses.

Automated summary

The study by Lennert et al. shows that individual recalibration behavior in response to audiovisual asynchrony is related to fast oscillations in the auditory cortex, shedding light on how brain oscillations contribute to forming unified percepts across senses. This highlights the role of cross-frequency coupled oscillations in integrating auditory and visual signals in the brain.