Oscillatory multi-timescale mechanisms underlying audiovisual sequence prediction

Neural oscillations have been proposed to be involved in predictive processing, however less addressed in the multisensory context. In the present study, we recorded cortical activity using magnetoencephalography during an audiovisual serial prediction task in which participants had to acquire stimulus sequences and to monitor whether subsequent probe items complied with the sequence. In a given trial, either visual or auditory features of the bimodal stimuli were task-relevant. Task-related changes of power and coupling of neural oscillations were analyzed using a data-driven clustering approach. We observed prediction-related theta-band (5-7 Hz) coupling in a network involving the cingulate, premotor, prefrontal, and superior temporal regions. The behavioral performance of participants varied as a function of the phase delay of the coupling between different regions in this network. Two additional spectro-temporal clusters were detected in which beta power (11-16 Hz and 16-22 Hz, respectively) was stronger if the previous or the following stimuli were the same as the current one in the sequence. These clusters spatially overlapped with the theta-band prediction cluster, and interacted with it through cross-frequency coupling. Our results offer novel insights into the multi-timescale neural dynamics underlying multisensory predictions, suggesting that oscillations in multiple frequency ranges, as well as coupling within and across frequencies, may be critical for multisensory sequence processing.