Effect of the side of presentation in the visual field on phase-locked and nonphase-locked alpha and gamma responses

Recent studies have suggested that nonphase-locked activity can reveal cognitive mechanisms that cannot be observed in phase-locked activity. In fact, we describe a concomitant decrease in nonphase-locked alpha activity (desynchronization) when stimuli were processed (alpha phase-locked modulation). This desynchronization may represent a reduction in “background activity” in the visual cortex that facilitates stimulus processing. Alternatively, nonphase-locked gamma activity has been hypothesized to be an index of shifts in attentional focus. In this study, our main aim was to confirm these potential roles for nonphase-locked alpha and gamma activities with a lateralized Go/NoGo paradigm. The results showed that nonphase-locked alpha modulation is bilaterally represented in the scalp compared to the contralateral distribution of the phase-locked response. This finding suggests that the decrease in background activity is not limited to neural areas directly involved in the visual processing of stimuli. Additionally, gamma activity showed a higher desynchronization of nonphase-locked activity in the ipsilateral hemisphere, where the phase-locked activity reached the minimum amplitude. This finding suggests that the possible functions of nonphase-locked gamma activity extend beyond shifts in attentional focus and could represent an attentional filter reducing the gamma representation in the visual area irrelevant to the task.