I like to say that anatomy is the road-and-highway system, activity is the traffic, and oscillations are the traffic lights. So, here you go:
Human brain networks function in connectome-specific harmonic waves.
Selen Atasoy, Isaac Donnelly & Joel Pearson
Nature Communications 7, Article number: 10340 doi:10.1038/ncomms10340
Oscillatory synchrony of prefrontal parvalbumin plays a role in top-down control of attention.
Kim, H., Ährlund-Richter, S., Wang, X., Deisseroth, K., & Carlén, M. (2016). Prefrontal Parvalbumin Neurons in Control of Attention. Cell, 164(1), 208-218.
Pascal Fries and crew add to the mounting evidence that slow vs fast oscillations subserve feedback vs feedforward information flow in the cortex.
Michalareas, G., Vezoli, J., van Pelt, S., Schoffelen, J. M., Kennedy, H., & Fries, P. (2016). Alpha-Beta and Gamma Rhythms Subserve Feedback and Feedforward Influences among Human Visual Cortical Areas. Neuron.
Excellent review of how wide-spread brain areas use synchronized rhythms form networks for focusing attention. Very comprehensive and thorough on both a maco and micro-circuit level.
Samaha and Postle report on the close relationship between alpha-band oscillations and human perception, including that individuals with higher alpha frequencies have vision with a finer temporal resolution. Cool.
Review: Kei Igarashi argues that learning-related changes in synchrony between oscillatory activity in the cortex and hippocampus enhances neural communication and thus supports memory storage and recall.
Advance copy of our new paper:
Kornblith, S. Buschman, T.J., and Miller, E.K. (2015) Stimulus Load and Oscillatory Activity in Higher Cortex. Cerebral Cortex. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhv182 Journal link
Abstract:
Exploring and exploiting a rich visual environment requires perceiving, attending, and remembering multiple objects simultaneously. Recent studies have suggested that this mental “juggling” of multiple objects may depend on oscillatory neural dynamics. We recorded local field potentials from the lateral intraparietal area, frontal eye fields, and lateral prefrontal cortex while monkeys maintained variable numbers of visual stimuli in working memory. Behavior suggested independent processing of stimuli in each hemifield. During stimulus presentation, higher-frequency power (50–100 Hz) increased with the number of stimuli (load) in the contralateral hemifield, whereas lower-frequency power (8–50 Hz) decreased with the total number of stimuli in both hemifields. During the memory delay, lower-frequency power increased with contralateral load. Load effects on higher frequencies during stimulus encoding and lower frequencies during the memory delay were stronger when neural activity also signaled the location of the stimuli. Like power, higher-frequency synchrony increased with load, but beta synchrony (16–30 Hz) showed the opposite effect, increasing when power decreased (stimulus presentation) and decreasing when power increased (memory delay). Our results suggest roles for lower-frequency oscillations in top-down processing and higher-frequency oscillations in bottom-up processing.
Fries and colleagues report that coupling between theta and gamma rhythms support attention. The 4 Hz phase of gamma oscillations predicted the accuracy of the subject’s ability to detect stimulus dimming.
Landau, Ayelet Nina, et al. “Distributed Attention Is Implemented through Theta-Rhythmic Gamma Modulation.” Current Biology (2015).
Voytek et al provide more evidence that oscillatory dynamics play a critical role in neural communication and cognitive control. As humans performed tasks that required greater abstraction, there was an increase in theta synchrony between anterior and posterior frontal cortex. This may allow more anterior frontal cortex is communicate the higher level goals to motor cortex.
Matt Wilson and colleagues describe how oscillatory cycles can be viewed as functional units, how different oscillation phases can represent distinct computations, and how all this can be organized across cycles. Phew!