Roles of multiscale brain activity fluctuations in shaping the variability and dynamics of psychophysical performance

Abstract

Spontaneous brain activity across many time scales influences sensory perception and human cognitive performance. Empirical insight into the underlying systems-level mechanisms has, however, remained fragmented. We review here recent studies on how wideband scale-free and scale-specific neuronal activity fluctuations together bias sensory processing and perceptual performance. We posit that these fluctuations constitute the neurophysiological foundation for both the trial-to-trial behavioral variability and the scaling laws governing psychophysical performance.