Effects of spatial frequency on visual evoked magnetic fields

Psychophysical and visual evoked potential (VEP) studies have shown that spatial frequency of a visual stimulus affects contrast sensitivity and VEPs in humans. However, it is not clear whether and how the effect of spatial frequency varies among cortical areas. Considering that all visual inputs to the retina could be expressed as a sum of sinusoidal gratings of different spatial frequencies, the effect of spatial frequency must be clarified to separate the brain activity specific to each visual stimulus. In order to examine the effect of spatial frequency on different cortical areas, the present study compared cortical responses to sinusoidal gratings of seven different spatial frequencies using magnetoencephalography (MEG). MEG waveforms of twelve healthy adults in response to sinusoidal gratings of 0.3-18.1 cycles per degree were subjected to a multi-dipole analysis. As a result, the effect of spatial frequency was significant on the first peak latency and amplitude of the source activity around V1 and V2 but not on the source activity around V3 and V6, indicating that the effect of spatial frequency varies across different visual areas in the human brain. Our results also suggest that the responses in V1 and V2 that have a peak around 90 ms and that of V6 peaking around 120 ms should be separated to investigate the stimulus-specific cortical response, particularly when examining effects of spatial frequency on the response latency.