Paper Info
Title
High-alpha band synchronization across frontal, parietal and visual cortex mediates behavioral and neuronal effects of visuospatial attention.
Abstract
Visuospatial attention prioritizes processing of attended visual stimuli. It is characterized by lateralized alpha-band (8–14 Hz) amplitude suppression in visual cortex and increased neuronal activity in a network of frontal and parietal areas. It has remained unknown what mechanisms coordinate neuronal processing among frontoparietal network and visual cortices and implement the attention-related modulations of alpha-band amplitudes and behavior. We investigated whether large-scale network synchronization could be such a mechanism. We recorded human cortical activity with magnetoencephalography (MEG) during a visuospatial attention task. We then identified the frequencies and anatomical networks of inter-areal phase synchronization from source localized MEG data. We found that visuospatial attention is associated with robust and sustained long-range synchronization of cortical oscillations exclusively in the high-alpha (10–14 Hz) frequency band. This synchronization connected frontal, parietal and visual regions and was observed concurrently with amplitude suppression of low-alpha (6–9 Hz) band oscillations in visual cortex. Furthermore, stronger high-alpha phase synchronization was associated with decreased reaction times to attended stimuli and larger suppression of alpha-band amplitudes. These results thus show that high-alpha band phase synchronization is functionally significant and could coordinate the neuronal communication underlying the implementation of visuospatial attention.
Year
DOI
Venue
2018
10.1016/j.neuroimage.2017.10.044
NeuroImage
Keywords
Field
DocType
MEG,Attention,Synchronization,Oscillations,Alpha
Synchronization,Neuroscience,Premovement neuronal activity,Visual cortex,Synchronization networks,Psychology,Cognitive psychology,Phase synchronization,Stimulus (physiology),Bioinformatics,Magnetoencephalography,Visual perception
Journal
Volume
ISSN
Citations 
165
1053-8119
4
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.45
6
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Muriel Lobier1211.69
J Matias Palva2202.07
Satu Palva3936.25