Decoding real-world visual scenes from the human gamma band with flicker-evoked oscillations

Current approaches to investigate the role of neural oscillations in natural scene processing have been limited to artificial stimuli and long data collection. We present a new way to decode real-world scenes participants are viewing from the steady-state visual evoked potentials (SSVEPs) evoked while wearing flickering LCD glasses. We discovered that SSVEP responses from real world scenes are surprisingly complex and have distinct waveform shapes: they differ markedly across scenes and participants but are consistent within individuals, even across multiple days. SSVEP shape varies greatly between stimuli, but is reliable, meaning that decoding works even with a single electrode. Decoding is highly accurate with 5-10 seconds of data and was still above chance level with less than a second of data. Decomposing the SSVEPs into frequency bands showed that the information about the visual scene is present across all of the harmonics of the flicker frequency, but with 40 Hz (gamma band) showing the highest amount of information across the different flicker frequencies tested. These findings implicate a broad range of oscillations in encoding real-world scenes, with a particular importance for 40 Hz. The SSVEP’s temporal profile is a rich source of information for decoding.