Inter-areal neural routing states emerge and switch during oscillatory bursts and with attention

We have a new major finding published at Neuron. We found that spiking in different areas (ACC, Striatum, LPFC) engage in ~20ms wide correlations, and that this coordinated activity has systematic time lags that correspond to the anatomical connectivity. These ‘baseline routing states’ are amplified during beta bursts, and switch directionality (between ACC and PFC) during bursts in the theta frequency band (and with attention and during a choice).

The paper has multiple unique analyses and findings, is backed up by biophysically realistic modeling and shows that the specific neurons that contribute to a directionally leading routing state can be identified.

The implications of this paper can be huge, as it documents a neuronal ensemble mechanism that correlates in 20ms time windows during inter-areal coordination. Kudos to Kianoush Banai Boroujeni to have pulled off such a comprehensive and sophisticated novel insight !

Related News

Striatum interneurons track learning of attention cues

Our new paper shows how fast spiking interneurons in the striatum activate specifically when attention cues are learned. This is a rare paper where we succeed to isolate fast spiking interneurons in recordings from nonhuman primate anterior striatum while the animals performed a complex feature-based attentional learning task. Phd can. Kia Banaeie Boroujeni spearheaded the […]

Phase-specific Activation Induces Latent Connectivity Changes

A recent paper provides rare causal evidence that phase-specific stimulation during beta oscillation bursts lead to transient changes in effective (latent) connectivity. This finding and its potentially widespread implications are discussed in our paper Womelsdorf T, Hoffman K (2018) Latent Connectivity: Neuronal Oscillations Can Be Leveraged for Transient Plasticity. Current Biology. 28(16):R879-R882..

Theta and Beta Frequency

Theta and beta frequency range coherence between anterior cingulate cortex and frontal eye field indexes the successful preparation for anti-saccades and maintenance of working memory content – with larger ACC to FEF direction of granger causal information flow! These important findings is now published in Nature Communications by Sahand Babapoor-Farrokhran and Stefan Everling with contributions […]