Stimulus-induced changes in 1/f-like background activity in EEG

Gyurkovics, Máté, Clements, Grace M., Low, Kathy A., Fabiani, Monica and Gratton, Gabriele (2022) Stimulus-induced changes in 1/f-like background activity in EEG. Journal of Neuroscience, 42 (37). pp. 7144-7151. ISSN 0270-6474

Full text not available from this repository. (Request a copy)

Abstract

Research into the nature of 1/f-like, nonoscillatory electrophysiological activity has grown exponentially in recent years in cognitive neuroscience. The shape of this activity has been linked to the balance between excitatory and inhibitory neural circuits, which is thought to be important for information processing. However, to date, it is not known whether the presentation of a stimulus induces changes in the parameters of 1/f activity in scalp recordings, separable from event-related potentials (ERPs). Here, we analyzed event-related broadband changes in human EEG both before and after removing ERPs to demonstrate their confounding effect, and to establish whether there are genuine stimulus-induced changes in 1/f. Using data from a passive and an active auditory task (n = 23, 61% female), we found that the shape of the post-event spectra between 2 and 25 Hz differed significantly from the pre-event spectra even after removing the frequency-content of ERPs. Further, a significant portion of this difference could be accounted for by a rotational shift in 1/f activity, manifesting as an increase in low and a decrease in high frequencies. Importantly, the magnitude of this rotational shift was related to the attentional demands of the task. This change in 1/f is consistent with increased inhibition following stimulus onset, and likely reflects a disruption of ongoing excitatory activity proportional to processing demands. Finally, these findings contradict the central assumption of baseline normalization strategies in time-frequency analyses, namely, that background EEG activity is stationary across time. As such, they have far-reaching consequences relevant for several subfields of neuroscience.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Funding Information: This work was supported by National Institute on Aging Grant RF1AG062666 to G.G. and M.F. The authors declare no competing financial interests.
Uncontrolled Keywords:	f activity,event-related potentials,power spectrum,neuroscience(all) ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/2800
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Psychology
Related URLs:	http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?...
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	13 Aug 2024 13:30
Last Modified:	13 Aug 2024 13:30
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/96234
DOI:	10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0414-22.2022

Actions (login required)

View Item