Role of gamma-band synchronization in priming of form discrimination for multiobject displays

Previous research has shown that synchronized flicker can facilitate detection of a single Kanizsa square. The present study investigated the role of temporally structured priming in discrimination tasks involving perceptual relations between multiple Kanizsa-type figures. Results indicate that visual information presented as temporally structured flicker in the gamma band can modulate the perception of multiple objects in a subsequent display. For judgments of both relative orientation and relative position of 2 rectangles, response time to identify and discriminate relations between the objects was consistently decreased when the vertices corresponding to distinct Kanizsa-type rectangles were primed asynchronously. Implications are discussed for models of the perception of objects and their interrelations.