Author name cluster

Virginie van Wassenhove

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6 papers

1 author row

YNIMG Journal 2020 Journal Article

Emergence of β and γ networks following multisensory training

Daria La Rocca
Philippe Ciuciu
Denis-Alexander Engemann
Virginie van Wassenhove

Our perceptual reality relies on inferences about the causal structure of the world given by multiple sensory inputs. In ecological settings, multisensory events that cohere in time and space benefit inferential processes: hearing and seeing a speaker enhances speech comprehension, and the acoustic changes of flapping wings naturally pace the motion of a flock of birds. Here, we asked how a few minutes of (multi)sensory training could shape cortical interactions in a subsequent unisensory perceptual task. For this, we investigated oscillatory activity and functional connectivity as a function of individuals’ sensory history during training. Human participants performed a visual motion coherence discrimination task while being recorded with magnetoencephalography. Three groups of participants performed the same task with visual stimuli only, while listening to acoustic textures temporally comodulated with the strength of visual motion coherence, or with auditory noise uncorrelated with visual motion. The functional connectivity patterns before and after training were contrasted to resting-state networks to assess the variability of common task-relevant networks, and the emergence of new functional interactions as a function of sensory history. One major finding is the emergence of a large-scale synchronization in the high γ (gamma: 60 − 120 H z ) and β (beta: 15 − 30 H z ) bands for individuals who underwent comodulated multisensory training. The post-training network involved prefrontal, parietal, and visual cortices. Our results suggest that the integration of evidence and decision-making strategies become more efficient following congruent multisensory training through plasticity in network routing and oscillatory regimes.

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YNICL Journal 2018 Journal Article

Diminished neural resources allocation to time processing in Autism Spectrum Disorders

Anna Lambrechts
Christine M. Falter-Wagner
Virginie van Wassenhove

BACKGROUND: Interval timing, the ability to judge the duration of short events, has been shown to be compromised in Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). Timing abilities are ubiquitous and underlie behaviours as varied as sensory integration, motor coordination or communication. It has been suggested that atypical temporal processing in ASD could contribute to some of the disorder's symptoms, in particular motor clumsiness and difficulties in social interaction and communication. Recent behavioural investigations have suggested that interval timing in ASD is characterised by intact sensitivity but reduced precision in duration judgements. METHODS: In this study we investigated the processing of duration as compared to pitch in a group of high-functioning individuals with ASD using magnetoencephalography (MEG). 18 adolescents and adults with ASD and 18 age- and IQ-matched typically-developing control (TDC) individuals compared two consecutive tones according to their duration or pitch in separate experimental blocks. The analysis was carried out exclusively on physically identical stimuli (500 Hz tones lasting 600 ms), which served, according to instruction, as standard or probe in a Duration or Pitch task respectively. RESULTS: Our results suggest that compared to TDC individuals, individuals with ASD are less able to predict the duration of the standard tone accurately, affecting the sensitivity of the comparison process. In addition, contrary to TDC individuals who allocate resources at different times depending on the nature of the task (pitch or duration discrimination), individuals with ASD seem to engage less resources for the Duration task than for the Pitch task regardless of the context. Although individuals with ASD showed top-down adaptation to the context of the task, this neuronal strategy reflects a bias in the readiness to perform different types of tasks, and in particular a diminished allocation of resources to duration processing which could have cascading effect on learning and development of other cognitive functions.

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YNIMG Journal 2015 Journal Article

Duration estimation entails predicting when

Virginie van Wassenhove
Lucille Lecoutre

The estimation of duration can be affected by context and surprise. Using MagnetoEncephaloGraphy (MEG), we tested whether increased neural activity during surprise and following neural suppression in two different contexts supported subjective time dilation (Eagleman and Pariyadath, 2009; Pariyadath and Eagleman, 2012). Sequences of three 300ms frequency-modulated (FM, control) or pure tones (test) were presented and followed by a fourth FM varying in duration. In test, the last FM was perceived as significantly longer than veridical duration (Tse et al. , 2004) but did not differ from the perceived duration in control. Several novel and distinct neural signatures were observed in duration estimation: first, neural suppression of standard stimuli was observed for the onset but not for the offset auditory evoked responses. Second, ramping activity increased with veridical duration in control whereas at the same latency in test, the amplitude of the midlatency response increased with the distance of deviant durations. Third, in both conditions, the amplitude of the offset auditory evoked responses accounted well for participants' performance: the longer the perceived duration, the larger the offset response. Fourth, neural duration demarcated by the peak latencies of the onset and ramping evoked activities indexed a systematic time compression that reliably predicted subjective time perception. Our findings suggest that interval timing undergoes time compression by capitalizing on the predicted offset of an auditory event.

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YNIMG Journal 2014 Journal Article

Encoding of event timing in the phase of neural oscillations

Anne Kösem
Alexandre Gramfort
Virginie van Wassenhove

Time perception is a critical component of conscious experience. To be in synchrony with the environment, the brain must deal not only with differences in the speed of light and sound but also with its computational and neural transmission delays. Here, we asked whether the brain could actively compensate for temporal delays by changing its processing time. Specifically, can changes in neural timing or in the phase of neural oscillation index perceived timing? For this, a lag-adaptation paradigm was used to manipulate participants' perceived audiovisual (AV) simultaneity of events while they were recorded with magnetoencephalography (MEG). Desynchronized AV stimuli were presented rhythmically to elicit a robust 1Hz frequency-tagging of auditory and visual cortical responses. As participants' perception of AV simultaneity shifted, systematic changes in the phase of entrained neural oscillations were observed. This suggests that neural entrainment is not a passive response and that the entrained neural oscillation shifts in time. Crucially, our results indicate that shifts in neural timing in auditory cortices linearly map participants' perceived AV simultaneity. To our knowledge, these results provide the first mechanistic evidence for active neural compensation in the encoding of sensory event timing in support of the emergence of time awareness.

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YNIMG Journal 2014 Journal Article

Supramodal processing optimizes visual perceptual learning and plasticity

Nicolas Zilber
Philippe Ciuciu
Alexandre Gramfort
Leila Azizi
Virginie van Wassenhove

Multisensory interactions are ubiquitous in cortex and it has been suggested that sensory cortices may be supramodal i. e. capable of functional selectivity irrespective of the sensory modality of inputs (Pascual-Leone and Hamilton, 2001; Renier et al. , 2013; Ricciardi and Pietrini, 2011; Voss and Zatorre, 2012). Here, we asked whether learning to discriminate visual coherence could benefit from supramodal processing. To this end, three groups of participants were briefly trained to discriminate which of a red or green intermixed population of random-dot-kinematograms (RDKs) was most coherent in a visual display while being recorded with magnetoencephalography (MEG). During training, participants heard no sound (V), congruent acoustic textures (AV) or auditory noise (AVn); importantly, congruent acoustic textures shared the temporal statistics – i. e. coherence – of visual RDKs. After training, the AV group significantly outperformed participants trained in V and AVn although they were not aware of their progress. In pre- and post-training blocks, all participants were tested without sound and with the same set of RDKs. When contrasting MEG data collected in these experimental blocks, selective differences were observed in the dynamic pattern and the cortical loci responsive to visual RDKs. First and common to all three groups, vlPFC showed selectivity to the learned coherence levels whereas selectivity in visual motion area hMT+ was only seen for the AV group. Second and solely for the AV group, activity in multisensory cortices (mSTS, pSTS) correlated with post-training performances; additionally, the latencies of these effects suggested feedback from vlPFC to hMT+ possibly mediated by temporal cortices in AV and AVn groups. Altogether, we interpret our results in the context of the Reverse Hierarchy Theory of learning (Ahissar and Hochstein, 2004) in which supramodal processing optimizes visual perceptual learning by capitalizing on sensory-invariant representations — here, global coherence levels across sensory modalities.

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YNIMG Journal 2013 Journal Article

Good practice for conducting and reporting MEG research

Joachim Gross
Sylvain Baillet
Gareth R. Barnes
Richard N. Henson
Arjan Hillebrand
Ole Jensen
Karim Jerbi
Vladimir Litvak

Magnetoencephalographic (MEG) recordings are a rich source of information about the neural dynamics underlying cognitive processes in the brain, with excellent temporal and good spatial resolution. In recent years there have been considerable advances in MEG hardware developments and methods. Sophisticated analysis techniques are now routinely applied and continuously improved, leading to fascinating insights into the intricate dynamics of neural processes. However, the rapidly increasing level of complexity of the different steps in a MEG study make it difficult for novices, and sometimes even for experts, to stay aware of possible limitations and caveats. Furthermore, the complexity of MEG data acquisition and data analysis requires special attention when describing MEG studies in publications, in order to facilitate interpretation and reproduction of the results. This manuscript aims at making recommendations for a number of important data acquisition and data analysis steps and suggests details that should be specified in manuscripts reporting MEG studies. These recommendations will hopefully serve as guidelines that help to strengthen the position of the MEG research community within the field of neuroscience, and may foster discussion in order to further enhance the quality and impact of MEG research.

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