Interaction between steady-state visually evoked potentials at nearby flicker frequencies

Steady-state visually evoked potential (SSVEP) studies routinely employ simultaneous presentation of two temporally modulated stimuli, with SSVEP amplitude modulations serving to index top-down cognitive processes. However, the nature of SSVEP amplitude modulations as a function of competing temporal frequency (TF) has not been systematically studied, especially in relation to the normalization framework which has been extensively used to explain visual responses to multiple stimuli. We recorded spikes and local field potential (LFP) from the primary visual cortex (V1) as well as EEG from two awake macaque monkeys while they passively fixated plaid stimuli with components counterphasing at different TFs. We observed asymmetric SSVEP response suppression by competing TFs (greater suppression for lower TFs), which further depended on the relative orientations of plaid components. A tuned normalization model, adapted to SSVEP responses, provided a good account of the suppression. Our results provide new insights into processing of temporally modulated visual stimuli.