Best-phase alignment normalizes individual variability in tACS phase effects

Evidence

Next, a ‘time series’ of the performance measure was reconstructed by concatenating the six phase conditions. To compensate for possible inter-individual variations in the phase for which performance was best, the maximum of the series was aligned to the 90°-point and the series was phase-wrapped (e.g., Ng et al. 2012 ). Following this ‘best-phase alignment’—under the main hypothesis that 4-Hz tACS phase modulates detection—phases 30–150° should delimit a positive 4-Hz half-cycle, whereas phases 210–330° should delimit the opposite (negative) half-cycle. — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 4777

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the ‘best-phase alignment’ normalization method that compensates for inter-individual phase differences before testing the phase-modulation hypothesis.