Nonuniform high-gamma (60-500 Hz) power changes dissociate cognitive task and anatomy in human cortex.

TitleNonuniform high-gamma (60-500 Hz) power changes dissociate cognitive task and anatomy in human cortex.
Publication TypeJournal Article
Year of Publication2011
AuthorsGaona, CM, Sharma, M, Freudenberg, ZV, Breshears, J, Bundy, DT, Roland, J, Barbour, DL, Schalk, G, Leuthardt, EC
JournalJ Neurosci
Volume31
Issue6
Pagination2091-100
Date Published02/2011
ISSN1529-2401
KeywordsAcoustic Stimulation, Adolescent, Adult, Analysis of Variance, Brain Mapping, Brain Waves, Cerebral Cortex, Cognition Disorders, Electroencephalography, Epilepsy, Evoked Potentials, Female, Humans, Male, Middle Aged, Neuropsychological Tests, Nonlinear Dynamics, Photic Stimulation, Reaction Time, Spectrum Analysis, Time Factors, Vocabulary
Abstract

High-gamma-band (>60 Hz) power changes in cortical electrophysiology are a reliable indicator of focal, event-related cortical activity. Despite discoveries of oscillatory subthreshold and synchronous suprathreshold activity at the cellular level, there is an increasingly popular view that high-gamma-band amplitude changes recorded from cellular ensembles are the result of asynchronous firing activity that yields wideband and uniform power increases. Others have demonstrated independence of power changes in the low- and high-gamma bands, but to date, no studies have shown evidence of any such independence above 60 Hz. Based on nonuniformities in time-frequency analyses of electrocorticographic (ECoG) signals, we hypothesized that induced high-gamma-band (60-500 Hz) power changes are more heterogeneous than currently understood. Using single-word repetition tasks in six human subjects, we showed that functional responsiveness of different ECoG high-gamma sub-bands can discriminate cognitive task (e.g., hearing, reading, speaking) and cortical locations. Power changes in these sub-bands of the high-gamma range are consistently present within single trials and have statistically different time courses within the trial structure. Moreover, when consolidated across all subjects within three task-relevant anatomic regions (sensorimotor, Broca's area, and superior temporal gyrus), these behavior- and location-dependent power changes evidenced nonuniform trends across the population. Together, the independence and nonuniformity of power changes across a broad range of frequencies suggest that a new approach to evaluating high-gamma-band cortical activity is necessary. These findings show that in addition to time and location, frequency is another fundamental dimension of high-gamma dynamics.

URLhttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21307246
DOI10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4722-10.2011
Alternate JournalJ. Neurosci.
PubMed ID21307246
PubMed Central IDPMC3737077

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