Modality-Attention Promotes the Neural Effects of Precise Timing Prediction in Early Sensory Processing

Precise timing prediction (TP) enables the brain to accurately predict the occurrence of upcoming events in millisecond timescale, which is fundamental for adaptive behaviors. The neural effect of the TP within a single sensory modality has been widely studied. However, less is known about how precise TP works when the brain is concurrently faced with multimodality sensory inputs. Modality attention (MA) is a crucial cognitive function for dealing with the overwhelming information induced by multimodality sensory inputs. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate whether and how the MA influences the neural effects of the precise TP. This study designed a visual–auditory temporal discrimination task, in which the MA was allocated to visual or auditory modality, and the TP was manipulated into no timing prediction (NTP), matched timing prediction (MTP), and violated timing prediction (VTP) conditions. Behavioral and electroencephalogram (EEG) data were recorded from 27 subjects, event-related potentials (ERP), time–frequency distributions of inter-trial coherence (ITC), and event-related spectral perturbation (ERSP) were analyzed. In the visual modality, precise TP led to N1 amplitude and 200–400 ms theta ITC variations. Such variations only emerged when the MA was attended. In auditory modality, the MTP had the largest P2 amplitude and delta ITC than other TP conditions when the MA was attended, whereas the distinctions disappeared when the MA was unattended. The results suggest that the MA promoted the neural effects of the precise TP in early sensory processing, which provides more neural evidence for better understanding the interactions between the TP and MA.