Abstract
Recent findings demonstrate an involvement of a prospective neural activity in decision making. These findings resonate well with rodent studies highlighting similarities between place cell activity at the decision point, and during the future behaviour. In this study, we investigate whether visual flicker is also a part of the prospective neural representation. Prior findings demonstrate a reactivation of flickering in the context of episodic retrieval, but it remains unclear if similar reactivation would be present during the future oriented query of a flickering related information. We hypothesized that the extent of rhythmic entrainment depends on the subjective certainty of the predicted event. To test that, we conducted a reaction time experiment in which participants had to make speeded decisions about the direction of an arrow presented on a flickering background. To manipulate participants expectation certainty, we gave a strong, medium or no indication about the side of the response, prior to a constant fore-period of 2.5 seconds. Electroencephalographic recordings of participants cortical activity were made throughout the experiment. Rhythmic entrainment source separation method was used to evaluate the extent of reactivation. Preliminary analysis gave support for an involvement of rhythmic entrainment in prospection with higher, but not with lower frequency (12.5, and 9.375 Hz respectively). In line with another recent feasibility study of steady-state visual evoked potentials in the domain of cognitive neuroscience, we found that even closely proximal frequencies may lead to different effects, and thus to the different conclusions.