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Alpha-band oscillations and visual temporal resolution: An expansion and partial replication of Samaha & Postle’s 2015 study: “The Speed of Alpha-Band Oscillations Predicts the Temporal Resolution of Visual Perception”
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  • Clinton S. Haarlem,
  • Kevin Mitchell,
  • Andrew Jackson,
  • Redmond O'Connell
Clinton S. Haarlem
Trinity College Dublin

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

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Kevin Mitchell
Trinity College Dublin
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Andrew Jackson
Trinity College Dublin
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Redmond O'Connell
Trinity College Dublin
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Abstract

The study of alpha band oscillations in the brain is a popular topic in cognitive neuroscience. A fair amount of research in recent years has focused on the potential role these oscillations may play in the discrete sampling of continuous sensory information. In particular, the question of whether or not peak frequency in the alpha band is linked with the temporal resolution of visual perception is a topic of ongoing debate. Some studies have reported a correlation between the two, whereas others were unable to observe a link. It is unclear whether these conflicting findings are due to differing methodologies and/or low statistical power, or due to the absence of a true relationship. Replication studies are needed to gain better insight into this matter. In the current study, we replicated an experiment published in a 2015 paper by Samaha & Postle. Additionally, we expanded on this study by adding an extra behavioural task, the critical flicker fusion task, to investigate if any links with peak alpha frequency are generalizable across multiple measures for visual temporal resolution. We succeeded in replicating some, but not all of Samaha & Postle’s findings. Our partial replication suggests that there may be a link between visual temporal resolution and peak alpha frequency. However, this relationship may be very small and only apparent for specific stimulus parameters. The correlations found in our study did not generalize to other behavioural measures for visual temporal resolution.