oscillations – Page 4 – The Miller Lab

8

Aug 2017

Control of Functional Connectivity in Cerebral Cortex by Basal Ganglia Mediated Synchronization

Miller Lab

Neuroscience

Loops between the basal ganglia and the cerebral cortex allow the basal ganglia to control functional connectivity in the cortex by synchronizing its rhythms.

Pouzzner, D. (2017). Control of Functional Connectivity in Cerebral Cortex by Basal Ganglia Mediated Synchronization. arXiv preprint arXiv:1708.00779.

For further reading:

Antzoulatos, E.G. and Miller, E.K. (2014) Increases in functional connectivity between the prefrontal cortex and striatum during category learning. Neuron, 83:216-225. View PDF »
Selected as one of Neuron’s Best of 2014-2015

Miller, E.K. and Buschman, T.J. (2013) Cortical circuits for the control of attention. Current Opinion in Neurobiology. 23:216–222. View PDF »

Buschman,T.J. and Miller, E.K. (2010) Shifting the Spotlight of Attention: Evidence for Discrete Computations in Cognition. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. 4(194): 1-9. View PDF »
8

Aug 2017

The Active Construction of the Visual World

Miller Lab

Neuroscience

Your eyes dart about rhythmically sampling different parts of a scene in little bites. Your memory system papers this over to create a illusion of seamless perception. Let Parr and Friston break it down for you:

Parr, T., & Friston, K. J. (2017). The active construction of the visual world. Neuropsychologia.

For further reading:

Buschman,T.J. and Miller, E.K. (2010) Shifting the Spotlight of Attention: Evidence for Discrete Computations in Cognition. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. 4(194): 1-9. View PDF »

Buschman, T.J. and Miller, E.K. (2009) Serial, covert, shifts of attention during visual search are reflected by the frontal eye fields and correlated with population oscillations. Neuron, 63: 386-396. View PDF
24

Jul 2017

High-alpha band synchronization across frontal, parietal and visual cortex mediates behavioral and neuronal effects of visuospatial attention

Miller Lab

Neuroscience

MEG study in humans shows the functional significance of high alpha-band synchrony for visual attention.

Lobier, M., Palva, J. M., & Palva, S. (2017). High-alpha band synchronization across frontal, parietal and visual cortex mediates behavioral and neuronal effects of visuospatial attention. bioRxiv, 165563.
17

Jul 2017

Coherent alpha oscillations link current and future receptive fields during saccades

Miller Lab

Neuroscience

Neupane et al show that alpha oscillations in area V4 link sites that encode the location of a stimulus before and after an eye movement. The alpha oscillations can help create a stable representation of the visual world during eye movements.

Neupane, S., Guitton, D., & Pack, C. C. (2017). Coherent alpha oscillations link current and future receptive fields during saccades. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 201701672.
14

Feb 2017

Theta and beta synchrony coordinate frontal eye fields and anterior cingulate cortex during sensorimotor mapping

Miller Lab

Neuroscience

The anterior cingulate and FEF coordinate through theta and beta phase synchronization between spikes in one and local field potential in the other.

Babapoor-Farrokhran, S., Vinck, M., Womelsdorf, T., & Everling, S. (2017). Theta and beta synchrony coordinate frontal eye fields and anterior cingulate cortex during sensorimotor mapping. Nature Communications, 8, 13967.
14

Feb 2017

Evidence for time division multiplexing of multiple simultaneous items in a sensory coding bottleneck

Miller Lab

Neuroscience

The brain monitors simultaneous sensory input by “time division multiplexing”, a rhythmic juggling of the two streams of information.

Evidence for time division multiplexing of multiple simultaneous items in a sensory coding bottleneck
Valeria C Caruso, Jeffrey T Mohl, Chris Glynn, JungAh Lee, Shawn M Willett, Azeem Zaman, Rolando Estrada, Surya Tokdar, Jennifer M Groh
20

Dec 2016

Oscillatory Dynamics of Prefrontal Cognitive Control

Miller Lab

Neuroscience

Randoph Helfrich and Robert Knight review evidence that the infrastructure of cognitive control is rhythmic. The general idea is that the prefrontal cortex controls large-scale oscillatory dynamics in the cortex and subcortex. But there is much more. Do yourself a favor: Read it.

Helfrich, R. F., & Knight, R. T. (2016). Oscillatory Dynamics of Prefrontal Cognitive Control. Trends in Cognitive Sciences.
20

Dec 2016

Large-scale network dynamics of beta-band oscillations underlie auditory perceptual decision making

Miller Lab

Neuroscience

Alavash et al show how changes in network dynamics in the beta (16-28 Hz) band. Faster perceptual decisions occurred when beta-coupling became more local than global. The also found different network states in different cortical areas were associated with faster decisions. This paper lends support for recent suggestions that cortical communication is regulated via beta synchrony.

Large-scale network dynamics of beta-band oscillations underlie auditory perceptual decision making
Mohsen Alavash, Christoph Daube, Malte Woestmann, Alex Brandmeyer, Jonas Obleser
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/095356

See also:
Buschman, T.J., Denovellis, E.L., Diogo, C., Bullock, D. and Miller, E.K. (2012) Synchronous oscillatory neural ensembles for rules in the prefrontal cortex. Neuron. 76: 838-846. View PDF »
Buschman T.J., Miller E.K. (2014) Goal-direction and top-down control. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2014 Nov 5;369(1655). View PDF »
9

Dec 2016

New paper: Synchronous beta rhythms of frontoparietal networks support only behaviorally relevant representations

Miller Lab

Miller Laboratory, Neuroscience

Antzoulatos, E. G., & Miller, E. K. (2016). Synchronous beta rhythms of frontoparietal networks support only behaviorally relevant representations. eLife, 5, e17822.

Abstract:
Categorization has been associated with distributed networks of the primate brain, including the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and posterior parietal cortex (PPC). Although category-selective spiking in PFC and PPC has been established, the frequency-dependent dynamic interactions of frontoparietal networks are largely unexplored. We trained monkeys to perform a delayed-match-to-spatial-category task while recording spikes and local field potentials from the PFC and PPC with multiple electrodes. We found category-selective beta- and delta-band synchrony between and within the areas. However, in addition to the categories, delta synchrony and spiking activity also reflected irrelevant stimulus dimensions. By contrast, beta synchrony only conveyed information about the task-relevant categories. Further, category-selective PFC neurons were synchronized with PPC beta oscillations, while neurons that carried irrelevant information were not. These results suggest that long-range beta-band synchrony could act as a filter that only supports neural representations of the variables relevant to the task at hand.
29

Nov 2016

New paper: Low-Beta Oscillations Turn Up the Gain During Category Judgments

Miller Lab

Miller Laboratory, Neuroscience

Stanley, D.A., Roy, J.E., Aoi, M.C., Kopell, N.J., and Miller, E.K. (2016) Low-beta oscillations turn up the gain during category judgments. Cerebral Cortex. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhw356 View PDF

Abstract:
Synchrony between local field potential (LFP) rhythms is thought to boost the signal of attended sensory inputs. Other cognitive functions could benefit from such gain control. One is categorization where decisions can be difficult if categories differ in subtle ways. Monkeys were trained to flexibly categorize smoothly varying morphed stimuli, using orthogonal boundaries to carve up the same stimulus space in 2 different ways. We found evidence for category-specific patterns of low-beta (16–20 Hz) synchrony in the lateral prefrontal cortex (PFC). This synchrony was stronger when a given category scheme was relevant. We also observed an overall increase in low-beta LFP synchrony for stimuli that were near the category boundary and thus more difficult to categorize. Beta category selectivity was evident in partial field–field coherence measurements, which measure local synchrony, but the boundary enhancement was not. Thus, it seemed that category selectivity relied on local interactions while boundary enhancement was a more global effect. The results suggest that beta synchrony helps form category ensembles and may reflect recruitment of additional cortical resources for categorizing challenging stimuli, thus serving as a form of gain control.