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”
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.