Are intrinsic neural timescales related to sensory processing? Evidence from abnormal behavioral states
Federico Zilio,
Javier Gomez-Pilar,
Shumei Cao,
Jun Zhang,
Di Zang,
Zengxin Qi,
Jiaxing Tan,
Tanigawa Hiromi,
Xuehai Wu,
Stuart Fogel,
Zirui Huang,
Matthias R. Hohmann,
Tatiana Fomina,
Matthis Synofzik,
Moritz Grosse-Wentrup,
Adrian M. Owen,
Georg Northoff
Affiliations
Federico Zilio
Department of Philosophy, Sociology, Education and Applied Psychology, University of Padova, Padua, Italy; Corresponding author.
Javier Gomez-Pilar
Biomedical Engineering Group, University of Valladolid, Valladolid, Spain; Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red en Bioingeniería, Biomateriales y Nanomedicina (CIBER-BBN), Valladolid, Spain
Shumei Cao
Department of Anesthesiology, Huashan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
Jun Zhang
Department of Anesthesiology, Huashan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
Di Zang
Department of Neurosurgery, Huashan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
Zengxin Qi
Department of Neurosurgery, Huashan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
Jiaxing Tan
Department of Neurosurgery, Huashan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
Tanigawa Hiromi
Department of Neurosurgery, Huashan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
Xuehai Wu
Department of Neurosurgery, Huashan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
Stuart Fogel
The Brain and Mind Institute, Department of Physiology and Pharmacology and the Department of Psychology, University of Western Ontario, Canada
Zirui Huang
Center for Consciousness Science, Department of Anesthesiology, University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, MI, United States
Matthias R. Hohmann
Department for Empirical Inference, Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Tübingen, Germany
Tatiana Fomina
Department for Empirical Inference, Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Tübingen, Germany
Matthis Synofzik
Department of Neurology, Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research, Tübingen, Germany
Moritz Grosse-Wentrup
Research Group Neuroinformatics, Faculty of Computer Science, University of Vienna, Austria
Adrian M. Owen
The Brain and Mind Institute, Department of Physiology and Pharmacology and the Department of Psychology, University of Western Ontario, Canada
Georg Northoff
Institute of Mental Health Research, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada
The brain exhibits a complex temporal structure which translates into a hierarchy of distinct neural timescales. An open question is how these intrinsic timescales are related to sensory or motor information processing and whether these dynamics have common patterns in different behavioral states. We address these questions by investigating the brain's intrinsic timescales in healthy controls, motor (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, locked-in syndrome), sensory (anesthesia, unresponsive wakefulness syndrome), and progressive reduction of sensory processing (from awake states over N1, N2, N3). We employed a combination of measures from EEG resting-state data: auto-correlation window (ACW), power spectral density (PSD), and power-law exponent (PLE). Prolonged neural timescales accompanied by a shift towards slower frequencies were observed in the conditions with sensory deficits, but not in conditions with motor deficits. Our results establish that the spontaneous activity's intrinsic neural timescale is related to the neural capacity that specifically supports sensory rather than motor information processing in the healthy brain.
