Large-scale brain activation upon strong low frequency visual stimulation

Abstract

Visual inputs are primarily processed by the visual system. However visual input also interacts with other sensory cortices to speed up or improve sensory perception. While the effect of different parameters of visual input to crossmodal influences remains largely unexplored, this study showed strong low frequency light evoked responses in auditory cortex, secondary somatosensory cortex, cingulate cortex and caudate putamen. The activations in those brain regions likely propagated from the visual cortex and influenced subcortical responses. Our current study provides a functional understanding to cortical crossmodal processing and its influences to subcortex upon visual stimuli of different intensities and frequencies.