Oscillatory traveling waves during visual entrainment in autistic and neurotypical adults

Oscillatory traveling waves during visual entrainment in autistic and neurotypical adults | bioRxiv Skip to main content Home About Submit ALERTS / RSS Search for this keyword Advanced Search New Results Oscillatory traveling waves during visual entrainment in autistic and neurotypical adults View ORCID Profile Andrea Alamia , Jakob C. B. Schwenk , Johan Wagemans , Laurie-Anne Sapey-Triomphe doi: https://doi.org/10.64898/2026.01.29.702587 Andrea Alamia 1 Cerco, CNRS, Université de Toulouse , Toulouse 31052, France Find this author on Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for this author on this site ORCID record for Andrea Alamia For correspondence: andrea.alamia{at}cnrs.fr Jakob C. B. Schwenk 1 Cerco, CNRS, Université de Toulouse , Toulouse 31052, France Find this author on Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for this author on this site Johan Wagemans 2 Department of Brain and Cognition, Leuven Brain Institute , KU Leuven, 3000 Leuven, Belgium Find this author on Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for this author on this site Laurie-Anne Sapey-Triomphe 2 Department of Brain and Cognition, Leuven Brain Institute , KU Leuven, 3000 Leuven, Belgium 3 Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, CNRS, INSERM, Centre de Recherche en Neurosciences de Lyon CRNL U1028 UMR5292, CAP team , F-69500, Bron, France Find this author on Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for this author on this site Abstract Full Text Info/History Metrics Preview PDF Abstract Neural oscillations play a crucial role in cognition, and several studies emphasize the importance of considering them as traveling waves that propagate through brain regions. In scalp EEG, waves typically travel along the anterior–posterior axis: forward waves (occipital-to-frontal) predominate during sensory stimulation, while backward waves (frontal-to-occipital) emerge during rest and top-down modulation. Within the predictive coding framework, backward waves are proposed to convey predictive signals, whereas forward waves reflect sensory processes and feedforward propagation of prediction errors. In this study, we investigated traveling wave dynamics during a visual entrainment task in neurotypical (N=25) and autistic (Autism Spectrum Disorder - ASD) adults (N=24). Our results replicated previous findings in neurotypical participants, as we observed an increase in backward waves during rhythmic visual stimulation, consistent with enhanced top-down predictions. Notably, we observed the opposite pattern in the ASD group, characterized by a pronounced increase in forward waves at the entrained frequency during visual stimulation. These results align with predictive coding accounts of autistic perception, which hypothesize an imbalance between predictions and sensory evidence. Specifically, an increase in forward wave may reflect a bias toward bottom-up sensory signaling over predictive feedback, due to atypical hierarchical communication across brain regions in ASD. Together, our findings shed new light on the oscillatory dynamics involved in visual entrainment in neurotypical adults and provide novel evidence in favor of predictive coding accounts of autistic perception, as well as a consequent bias toward bottom-up sensory signaling over predictive feedback in a context of visual entrainment. Significance statement Traveling waves reflect the spatiotemporal propagation of neural oscillations, providing a window into hierarchical brain communication. By examining traveling wave dynamics during visual entrainment, we show that neurotypical adults exhibit increased backward (frontal-to-occipital) waves, consistent with enhanced top-down predictive signaling. In contrast, adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) display a marked increase in forward (occipital-to-frontal) waves, indicating stronger bottom-up sensory drive. These findings provide electrophysiological evidence for atypical predictive processing in ASD, supporting predictive coding theories that propose an imbalance between sensory evidence and prior expectations. Our results highlight traveling waves as a sensitive neural marker of hierarchical signaling and predictive dynamics across typical and atypical perceptual systems. Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. Footnotes laurie-anne.sapey-triomphe{at}inserm.fr Conflict of interest statement: The authors declare no competing financial interests. Funder Information Declared European Research Council , 101075930 Copyright The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license . Back to top Previous Next Posted January 29, 2026. Download PDF Email Thank you for your interest in spreading the word about bioRxiv. NOTE: Your email address is requested solely to identify you as the sender of this article. Your Email * Your Name * Send To * Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas. You are going to email the following Oscillatory traveling waves during visual entrainment in autistic and neurotypical adults Message Subject (Your Name) has forwarded a page to you from bioRxiv Message Body (Your Name) thought you would like to see this page from the bioRxiv website. Your Personal Message CAPTCHA This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions. Share Oscillatory traveling waves during visual entrainment in autistic and neurotypical adults Andrea Alamia , Jakob C. B. Schwenk , Johan Wagemans , Laurie-Anne Sapey-Triomphe bioRxiv 2026.01.29.702587; doi: https://doi.org/10.64898/2026.01.29.702587 Share This Article: Copy Citation Tools Oscillatory traveling waves during visual entrainment in autistic and neurotypical adults Andrea Alamia , Jakob C. B. Schwenk , Johan Wagemans , Laurie-Anne Sapey-Triomphe bioRxiv 2026.01.29.702587; doi: https://doi.org/10.64898/2026.01.29.702587 Citation Manager Formats BibTeX Bookends EasyBib EndNote (tagged) EndNote 8 (xml) Medlars Mendeley Papers RefWorks Tagged Ref Manager RIS Zotero Tweet Widget Facebook Like Google Plus One Subject Area Neuroscience Subject Areas All Articles Animal Behavior and Cognition (8164) Biochemistry (19027) Bioengineering (15171) Bioinformatics (45807) Biophysics (22958) Cancer Biology (20247) Cell Biology (27493) Clinical Trials Developmental Biology (14233) Ecology (21529) Epidemiology (2067) Evolutionary Biology (25940) Genetics (16436) Genomics (23978) Immunology (19175) Microbiology (43481) Molecular Biology (18481) Neuroscience (95833) Paleontology (717) Pathology (3064) Pharmacology and Toxicology (5253) Physiology (8339) Plant Biology (16378) Scientific Communication and Education (2123) Synthetic Biology (4675) Systems Biology (10449) Zoology (2436)

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