At the same time, visual regions represent the predicted content – the orientation that would have appeared if the sequence had continued – in a temporally-precise way. Instead of overall visual activity entraining, specifically activity encoding predicted content rises and falls with the rhythm.
Following the stimulus-empty window, participants saw a probe which, varying by block, they had to judge in terms of its orientation or timing. When judging time, but not orientation, motor oscillations phase-couple (or ‘entrain’) to the tracked – but absent – rhythm, predicting task performance.
Content and time are inherently linked in our perceptual experience, so much so that we use changes in content – like hands on a clock – to tell time. Here, we ask how the brain conjointly keeps track of content and time.