@article{Comprehension:1680,
      recid = {1680},
      author = {Brookshire, Geoffrey Thomas},
      title = {Temporal Predictions in Perception and Language  Comprehension},
      publisher = {The University of Chicago},
      school = {Ph.D.},
      address = {2018-06},
      pages = {75},
      abstract = {During perception, information is not uniformly  distributed over time; some time-points are more  informative than others. How does the brain get ready to  perceive upcoming bursts of information? When people listen  to quasi-periodic stimuli such as speech or music,  electrophysiological activity in cerebral cortex  synchronizes with pulses in the stimulus. Cortical  synchronization helps to align information in the stimulus  with periods of maximal neural excitability. However, it  remains unknown how the brain uses temporal structure in  the stimulus to drive cortical synchronization. In Study 1,  I test whether cortical synchronization depends on  characteristics of sensory cortex, or on informational  characteristics of the stimulus. I develop a metric to  quantify visual information over time, and use  electroencephalography (EEG) to test for cortical  synchronization to temporal structure in sign language.  Results show that cortical synchronization depends on the  structure of information in the stimulus, not on  modality-specific perceptual processes. Cortical  synchronization is often thought to rely on oscillatory  resonance to rhythms in the stimulus, analogous to harmonic  resonance in other physical and biological systems.  However, the brain synchronizes to both isochronous and  non-isochronous sequences, raising the possibility that  temporal expectations may rely on a non-oscillatory  mechanism. In Study 2, with two EEG experiments and a  computational model, I show that oscillatory resonance can  generate predictive neural activity to predictable  non-isochronous rhythms. Resonance can lead to behavior  that appears "smart", despite being solely stimulus-driven.  Together, these studies suggest that oscillatory resonance  provides a flexible, domain-general mechanism that can  support temporal predictions across sensory modalities,  enabling the cerebral cortex to maximize sensitivity to  informational peaks in time-varying signals.},
      url = {http://knowledge.uchicago.edu/record/1680},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.6082/uchicago.1680},
}