Spatiotemporal Analysis of Neuromagnetic Events Underlying the Emergence of Coordinative Instabilities

Abstract

A full-head 143-channel superconducting quantum interference device was used to study changes occurring in the magnetic activity of the human brain during performance of an auditory–motor coordination task in which the rate of coordination was systematically increased. Previous research using the same task paradigm demonstrated that spontaneous switches in timing behavior that arise with higher coordination rates are accompanied by qualitative changes in spatiotemporal brain activity measured by electro- and magnetoencephalography. Here we show how these patterns can be decomposed into basic physiological events, i.e., evoked brain responses to acoustic tones and self-initiated finger movements. The frequency dependence of the amplitudes of these component responses may shed new light onto why spontaneous timing transitions occur in the first place.