Abstract
Despite the impression that our visual perception is seamless and continuous across time, evidence suggests that our visual experience relies on a series of discrete moments, similar to the snapshots of a video clip. My research focuses on these perceptual and attentional rhythms. Information would be processed in discrete samples; our ability to discriminate and attend to visual stimuli fluctuating between favorable and less favorable moments. I will present a series of experiments, using multimodal functional neuroimaging combined with psychophysical measurements in healthy humans that assess the mechanisms underlying psychophysical performance during and between two perceptual samples, and how these rhythmic mental representations are implemented at the neural level. I will argue that two sampling rhythms coexist, i.e. the alpha rhythm (8–12 Hz) to allow for sensory, perceptual sampling, and the theta rhythm (3–8 Hz) rather supporting rhythmic, attentional exploration of the visual environment.