Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 108, Issue 48, Pages 19377-19382Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1117190108
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Funding
- Division for the Earth and Life Sciences from The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research [817.02.010]
- Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research [453.09.002]
- Netherlands Ministry of Economic Affairs
- Netherlands Ministry of Education, Culture and Science
- Howard Hughes Medical Institute
- Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologia
- Direccion del Personal Academico de la Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico
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Extensive work in humans using magneto-and electroencephalography strongly suggests that decreased oscillatory alpha-activity (8-14 Hz) facilitates processing in a given region, whereas increased a-activity serves to actively suppress irrelevant or interfering processing. However, little work has been done to understand how a-activity is linked to neuronal firing. Here, we simultaneously recorded local field potentials and spikes from somatosensory, premotor, and motor regions while a trained monkey performed a vibrotactile discrimination task. In the local field potentials we observed strong activity in the alpha-band, which decreased in the sensorimotor regions during the discrimination task. This alpha-power decrease predicted better discrimination performance. Furthermore, the alpha-oscillations demonstrated a rhythmic relation with the spiking, such that firing was highest at the trough of the alpha-cycle. Firing rates increased with a decrease in alpha-power. These findings suggest that alpha-oscillations exercise a strong inhibitory influence on both spike timing and firing rate. Thus, the pulsed inhibition by alpha-oscillations plays an important functional role in the extended sensorimotor system.
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