EEG gamma-band activity during audiovisual speech comprehension in different noise environments

The presence of cross-modal stochastic resonance in different noise environments has been proved in previous behavioral and event-related potential studies, while it was still unclear whether the gamma-band oscillation study was another evidence of cross-modal stochastic resonance. The multisensory gain of gamma-band activity between the audiovisual (AV) and auditory-only conditions in different noise environments was analyzed. Videos of face motion articulating words concordant with different levels of pink noise were used as stimuli. Signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) of 0, −4, −8, −12 and −16 dB were selected to measure the speech recognition accuracy and EEG activity for 20 healthy subjects. The power and phase of EEG gamma-band oscillations increased in a time window of 50–90 ms. The multisensory gains of evoked and total activity, as well as phase-locking factor, were greatest at the −12 dB SNR, which were consistent with the behavioral result. The multisensory gain of gamma-band activity showed an inverted U-shaped curve as a function of SNR. This finding confirmed the presence of cross-modal stochastic resonance. In addition, there was a significant correlation between evoked activity and phase-locking factor of gamma-band at five different SNRs. Gamma-band oscillation was believed to play a role in the rapid processing and information linkage strengthening of AV modalities in the early stage of cognitive processes.