scholarly journals Ultra-low frequency neural entrainment to pain

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Y Guo ◽  
RJ Bufacchi ◽  
G Novembre ◽  
M Kilintari ◽  
M Moayedi ◽  
...  

AbstractNervous systems exploit regularities in the sensory environment to predict sensory input and adjust behavior, and thereby maximize fitness. Entrainment of neural oscillations allows retaining temporal regularities of sensory information, a prerequisite for prediction. Entrainment has been extensively described at the frequencies of periodic inputs most commonly present in visual and auditory landscapes (e.g. >1 Hz). An open question is whether neural entrainment also occurs for regularities at much longer timescales. Here we exploited the fact that the temporal dynamics of thermal stimuli in natural environment can unfold very slowly. We show that ultra-low frequency neural oscillations preserved a long-lasting trace of sensory information through neural entrainment to periodic thermo-nociceptive input as low as 0.1 Hz. Importantly, revealing the functional significance of this phenomenon, both power and phase of the entrainment predicted individual pain sensitivity. In contrast, periodic auditory input at the same ultra-low frequency did not entrain ultra-low frequency oscillations. These results demonstrate that a functionally-significant neural entrainment can occur at temporal scales far longer than those commonly explored. The non-supramodal nature of our results suggests that ultra-low frequency entrainment might be tuned to the temporal scale of the statistical regularities characteristic of different sensory modalities.

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Kösem ◽  
Hans Rutger Bosker ◽  
Atsuko Takashima ◽  
Antje Meyer ◽  
Ole Jensen ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTLow-frequency neural entrainment to rhythmic input has been hypothesized as a canonical mechanism that shapes sensory perception in time. Neural entrainment is deemed particularly relevant for speech analysis, as it would contribute to the extraction of discrete linguistic elements from continuous acoustic signals. Yet, its causal influence in speech perception has been difficult to establish. Here, we provide evidence that oscillations build temporal predictions about the duration of speech tokens that directly influence perception. Using magnetoencephalography (MEG), we studied neural dynamics during listening to sentences that changed in speech rate. We observed neural entrainment to preceding speech rhythms persisting for several cycles after the change in rate. The sustained entrainment was associated with changes in the perceived duration of the last word’s vowel, resulting in the perception of words with radically different meanings. These findings support oscillatory models of speech processing, suggesting that neural oscillations actively shape speech perception.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacques Pesnot Lerousseau ◽  
Agnès Trébuchon ◽  
Benjamin Morillon ◽  
Daniele Schön

AbstractRhythmic stimulation, either sensory or electrical, aiming at entraining oscillatory activity to reveal or optimize brain functions, relies on a critically untested hypothesis: it should produce a persistent effect, outlasting the stimulus duration. We tested this assumption by studying cortical neural oscillations during and after presentation of rhythmic auditory stimuli. Using intracranial and surface recordings in humans, we reveal consistent neural response properties throughout the cortex, with persistent entrainment being selective to high-gamma oscillations. Critically, during passive perception, neural oscillations do not outlast low-frequency acoustic dynamics. We further show that our data are well-captured by a model of damped harmonic oscillator and can be classified into three classes of neural dynamics, with distinct damping properties and eigenfrequencies. This model thus provides a mechanistic and quantitative explanation of the frequency selectivity of persistent neural entrainment in the human cortex.Highlights- Neural oscillatory activity does not outlast low-frequency (2.5 Hz) acoustic dynamics during passive perception.- High-gamma activity is entrained by periodic auditory stimuli, with persistent activity up to 10 cycles after stimulus offset.- This frequency following response (FFR) is present throughout the cortex, up to inferior frontal and motor regions.- The frequency selective nature of neural entrainment is well-captured by a model of damped harmonic oscillator.


2020 ◽  
Vol 123 (3) ◽  
pp. 1063-1071
Author(s):  
Indiana Wollman ◽  
Pablo Arias ◽  
Jean-Julien Aucouturier ◽  
Benjamin Morillon

During auditory perception, neural oscillations are known to entrain to acoustic dynamics but their role in the processing of auditory information remains unclear. As a complex temporal structure that can be parameterized acoustically, music is particularly suited to address this issue. In a combined behavioral and EEG experiment in human participants, we investigated the relative contribution of temporal (acoustic dynamics) and nontemporal (melodic spectral complexity) dimensions of stimulation on neural entrainment, a stimulus-brain coupling phenomenon operationally defined here as the temporal coherence between acoustical and neural dynamics. We first highlight that low-frequency neural oscillations robustly entrain to complex acoustic temporal modulations, which underscores the fine-grained nature of this coupling mechanism. We also reveal that enhancing melodic spectral complexity, in terms of pitch, harmony, and pitch variation, increases neural entrainment. Importantly, this manipulation enhances activity in the theta (5 Hz) range, a frequency-selective effect independent of the note rate of the melodies, which may reflect internal temporal constraints of the neural processes involved. Moreover, while both emotional arousal ratings and neural entrainment were positively modulated by spectral complexity, no direct relationship between arousal and neural entrainment was observed. Overall, these results indicate that neural entrainment to music is sensitive to the spectral content of auditory information and indexes an auditory level of processing that should be distinguished from higher-order emotional processing stages. NEW & NOTEWORTHY Low-frequency (<10 Hz) cortical neural oscillations are known to entrain to acoustic dynamics, the so-called neural entrainment phenomenon, but their functional implication in the processing of auditory information remains unclear. In a behavioral and EEG experiment capitalizing on parameterized musical textures, we disentangle the contribution of stimulus dynamics, melodic spectral complexity, and emotional judgments on neural entrainment and highlight their respective spatial and spectral neural signature.


2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dongge Guo ◽  
Jianan Ding ◽  
Heng Liu ◽  
Lin Zhou ◽  
Jiang Feng ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Why a variety of social animals emit foraging-associated calls during group foraging remains an open question. These vocalizations may be used to recruit conspecifics to food patches (i.e. food advertisement hypothesis) or defend food resources against competitors (food defence hypothesis), presumably depending on food availability. Insectivorous bats rely heavily on vocalizations for navigation, foraging, and social interactions. In this study, we used free-ranging big-footed myotis (Myotis macrodactylus Temminck, 1840) to test whether social calls produced in a foraging context serve to advertise food patches or to ward off food competitors. Using a combination of acoustic recordings, playback experiments with adult females and dietary monitoring (light trapping and DNA metabarcoding techniques), we investigated the relationship between insect availability and social vocalizations in foraging bats. Results The big-footed myotis uttered low-frequency social calls composed of 7 syllable types during foraging interactions. Although the dietary composition of bats varied across different sampling periods, Diptera, Lepidoptera, and Trichoptera were the most common prey consumed. The number of social vocalizations was primarily predicted by insect abundance, insect species composition, and echolocation vocalizations from conspecifics. The number of conspecific echolocation pulses tended to decrease following the emission of most social calls. Feeding bats consistently decreased foraging attempts and food consumption during playbacks of social calls with distinctive structures compared to control trials. The duration of flight decreased 1.29–1.96 fold in the presence of social calls versus controls. Conclusions These results support the food defence hypothesis, suggesting that foraging bats employ social calls to engage in intraspecific food competition. This study provides correlative evidence for the role of insect abundance and diversity in influencing the emission of social calls in insectivorous bats. Our findings add to the current knowledge of the function of social calls in echolocating bats.


2015 ◽  
Vol 113 (5) ◽  
pp. 1556-1563 ◽  
Author(s):  
Freek van Ede ◽  
Stan van Pelt ◽  
Pascal Fries ◽  
Eric Maris

Neural oscillations have emerged as one of the major electrophysiological phenomena investigated in cognitive and systems neuroscience. These oscillations are typically studied with regard to their amplitude, phase, and/or phase coupling. Here we demonstrate the existence of another property that is intrinsic to neural oscillations but has hitherto remained largely unexplored in cognitive and systems neuroscience. This pertains to the notion that these oscillations show reliable diversity in their phase-relations between neighboring recording sites (phase-relation diversity). In contrast to most previous work, we demonstrate that this diversity is restricted neither to low-frequency oscillations nor to periods outside of sensory stimulation. On the basis of magnetoencephalographic (MEG) recordings in humans, we show that this diversity is prominent not only for ongoing alpha oscillations (8–12 Hz) but also for gamma oscillations (50–70 Hz) that are induced by sustained visual stimulation. We further show that this diversity provides a dimension within electrophysiological data that, provided a sufficiently high signal-to-noise ratio, does not covary with changes in amplitude. These observations place phase-relation diversity on the map as a prominent and general property of neural oscillations that, moreover, can be studied with noninvasive methods in healthy human volunteers. This opens important new avenues for investigating how neural oscillations contribute to the neural implementation of cognition and behavior.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shinya Ito ◽  
Yufei Si ◽  
Alan M. Litke ◽  
David A. Feldheim

AbstractSensory information from different modalities is processed in parallel, and then integrated in associative brain areas to improve object identification and the interpretation of sensory experiences. The Superior Colliculus (SC) is a midbrain structure that plays a critical role in integrating visual, auditory, and somatosensory input to assess saliency and promote action. Although the response properties of the individual SC neurons to visuoauditory stimuli have been characterized, little is known about the spatial and temporal dynamics of the integration at the population level. Here we recorded the response properties of SC neurons to spatially restricted visual and auditory stimuli using large-scale electrophysiology. We then created a general, population-level model that explains the spatial, temporal, and intensity requirements of stimuli needed for sensory integration. We found that the mouse SC contains topographically organized visual and auditory neurons that exhibit nonlinear multisensory integration. We show that nonlinear integration depends on properties of auditory but not visual stimuli. We also find that a heuristically derived nonlinear modulation function reveals conditions required for sensory integration that are consistent with previously proposed models of sensory integration such as spatial matching and the principle of inverse effectiveness.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ignacio Saez ◽  
Jack Lin ◽  
Edward Chang ◽  
Josef Parvizi ◽  
Robert T. Knight ◽  
...  

AbstractHuman neuroimaging and animal studies have linked neural activity in orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) to valuation of positive and negative outcomes. Additional evidence shows that neural oscillations, representing the coordinated activity of neuronal ensembles, support information processing in both animal and human prefrontal regions. However, the role of OFC neural oscillations in reward-processing in humans remains unknown, partly due to the difficulty of recording oscillatory neural activity from deep brain regions. Here, we examined the role of OFC neural oscillations (<30Hz) in reward processing by combining intracranial OFC recordings with a gambling task in which patients made economic decisions under uncertainty. Our results show that power in different oscillatory bands are associated with distinct components of reward evaluation. Specifically, we observed a double dissociation, with a selective theta band oscillation increase in response to monetary gains and a beta band increase in response to losses. These effects were interleaved across OFC in overlapping networks and were accompanied by increases in oscillatory coherence between OFC electrode sites in theta and beta band during gain and loss processing, respectively. These results provide evidence that gain and loss processing in human OFC are supported by distinct low-frequency oscillations in networks, and provide evidence that participating neuronal ensembles are organized functionally through oscillatory coherence, rather than local anatomical segregation.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kay A. Robbins ◽  
Jonathan Touryan ◽  
Tim Mullen ◽  
Christian Kothe ◽  
Nima Bigdely-Shamlo

AbstractAlthough several guidelines for best practices in EEG preprocessing have been released, even those studies that strictly adhere to those guidelines contain considerable variation in the ways that the recommended methods are applied. An open question for researchers is how sensitive the results of EEG analyses are to variations in preprocessing methods and parameters. To address this issue, we analyze the effect of preprocessing methods on downstream EEG analysis using several simple signal and event-related measures. Signal measures include recording-level channel amplitudes, study-level channel amplitude dispersion, and recording spectral characteristics. Event-related methods include ERPs and ERSPs and their correlations across methods for a diverse set of stimulus events. Our analysis also assesses differences in residual signals both in the time and spectral domains after blink artifacts have been removed. Using fully automated pipelines, we evaluate these measures across 17 EEG studies for two ICA-based preprocessing approaches (LARG, MARA) plus two variations of Artifact Subspace Reconstruction (ASR). Although the general structure of the results is similar across these preprocessing methods, there are significant differences, particularly in the low-frequency spectral features and in the residuals left by blinks. These results argue for detailed reporting of processing details as suggested by most guidelines, but also for using a federation of automated processing pipelines and comparison tools to quantify effects of processing choices as part of the research reporting.


2015 ◽  
Vol 112 (45) ◽  
pp. E6233-E6242 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith B. Doelling ◽  
David Poeppel

Recent studies establish that cortical oscillations track naturalistic speech in a remarkably faithful way. Here, we test whether such neural activity, particularly low-frequency (<8 Hz; delta–theta) oscillations, similarly entrain to music and whether experience modifies such a cortical phenomenon. Music of varying tempi was used to test entrainment at different rates. In three magnetoencephalography experiments, we recorded from nonmusicians, as well as musicians with varying years of experience. Recordings from nonmusicians demonstrate cortical entrainment that tracks musical stimuli over a typical range of tempi, but not at tempi below 1 note per second. Importantly, the observed entrainment correlates with performance on a concurrent pitch-related behavioral task. In contrast, the data from musicians show that entrainment is enhanced by years of musical training, at all presented tempi. This suggests a bidirectional relationship between behavior and cortical entrainment, a phenomenon that has not previously been reported. Additional analyses focus on responses in the beta range (∼15–30 Hz)—often linked to delta activity in the context of temporal predictions. Our findings provide evidence that the role of beta in temporal predictions scales to the complex hierarchical rhythms in natural music and enhances processing of musical content. This study builds on important findings on brainstem plasticity and represents a compelling demonstration that cortical neural entrainment is tightly coupled to both musical training and task performance, further supporting a role for cortical oscillatory activity in music perception and cognition.


Author(s):  
Dirk Kerzel ◽  
Stanislas Huynh Cong

AbstractVisual search may be disrupted by the presentation of salient, but irrelevant stimuli. To reduce the impact of salient distractors, attention may suppress their processing below baseline level. While there are many studies on the attentional suppression of distractors with features distinct from the target (e.g., a color distractor with a shape target), there is little and inconsistent evidence for attentional suppression with distractors sharing the target feature. In this study, distractor and target were temporally separated in a cue–target paradigm, where the cue was shown briefly before the target display. With target-matching cues, RTs were shorter when the cue appeared at the target location (valid cues) compared with when it appeared at a nontarget location (invalid cues). To induce attentional suppression, we presented the cue more frequently at one out of four possible target positions. We found that invalid cues appearing at the high-frequency cue position produced less interference than invalid cues appearing at a low-frequency cue position. Crucially, target processing was also impaired at the high-frequency cue position, providing strong evidence for attentional suppression of the cued location. Overall, attentional suppression of the frequent distractor location could be established through feature-based attention, suggesting that feature-based attention may guide attentional suppression just as it guides attentional enhancement.


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