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Putative rhythms in attentional switching can be explained by aperiodic temporal structure | Nature Human Behaviour

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Research has suggested that attention rhythmically switches between targets at a frequency of 3–8 Hz. Here Brookshire shows that seemingly periodic rhythms of attention may be artefactual.

Download PDF Subjects Attention Human behaviour Abstract The neural and perceptual effects of attention were traditionally assumed to be sustained over time, but recent work suggests that covert attention rhythmically switches between objects at 3–8 Hz. Here I use simulations to demonstrate that the analysis approaches commonly used to test for rhythmic oscillations generate false positives in the presence of aperiodic temporal structure. I then propose two alternative analyses that are better able to discriminate between periodic and aperiodic structure in time series. Finally, I apply these

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