Effects of Rhythmic Auditory Stimulation on Vision: Oscillations in Performance Can Be Enhanced, but Not Induced

A variety of reports suggest that rhythmic auditory stimulation can entrain visual perception, inducing perceptual oscillations as a function of time relative to the auditory rhythm. These effects have, to date, been reported only for stimulation frequencies at and below 3 Hz. Here we investigate the effects of rhythmic auditory stimulation on the detection of masked visual targets when this stimulation occurs at frequencies to which the visual system has been shown to entrain (8-12 Hz). Across four experiments, we found no consistent evidence of poststimulation modulations in performance induced by 8.5, 10.6, or 12.1 Hz auditory stimulation. This absence of a consistent auditory-to-visual effect was paralleled by an absence of unimodal effects (oscillations in auditory performance) following 12.1 Hz auditory stimulation. In a fifth experiment, we found that although auditory stimulation alone did not induce oscillations in visual performance, auditory stimulation did enhance the effects of concurrent visual stimulation. Notably, this enhancement did not require synchronous presentation of stimuli. These observations are consistent with recent reports that passive auditory stimulation beyond 5 Hz induces neither auditory perceptual oscillations nor visual cortical oscillations and suggest limits to the extent of cross-modal entrainment. Public Significance Statement This study suggests that although performance on visual tasks will synchronize to a visual rhythm in the 8-12 Hz range, performance on similar tasks will not synchronize to an auditory rhythm of the same frequency. However, adding an auditory rhythm to a visual rhythm may enhance the effects of the visual rhythm on performance. These observations suggest limits to the extent to which processes in one modality will entrain (or synchronize) to input from another modality. Identifying these limitations improves our understanding of when and how such synchronization contributes to cognition.