Spontaneous Fluctuations in Posterior a-Band EEG Activity Reflect Variability in Excitability of Human Visual Areas

Neural activity fluctuates dynamically with time, and these changes have been reported to be of behavioral significance, despite occurring spontaneously. Through electroencephalography (EEG), fluctuations in a-band (8--14 Hz) activity have been identified over posterior sites that covary on a trial-by-trial basis with whether an upcoming visual stimulus will be detected or not. These fluctuations are thought to index the momentary state of visual cortex excitability. Here, we tested this hypothesis by directly exciting human visual cortex via transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to induce illusory visual percepts (phosphenes) in blindfolded participants, while simultaneously recording EEG. We found that identical TMS-stimuli evoked a percept (P-yes) or not (P-no) depending on prestimulus a-activity. Low prestimulus a-band power resulted in TMS reliably inducing phosphenes (P-yes trials), whereas high prestimulus a-values led the same TMS-stimul