The quality of visual entrainment correlates with forward traveling wave properties in human cortex

Abstract

AbstractBackgroundFlickering light stimulation has been shown to entrain the brain’s oscillatory activity at the input frequency and synchronize different cortical regions in that frequency (Herrmann et al., 2001; Lahijanian et al., 2021). Brain entrainment at gamma frequency has been proposed and shown promising results as a non‐pharmaceutical therapeutic approach for Alzheimer’s disease (Cimenser et al., 2021). Studying the effects of such stimulation on the brain’s neural activity can help explain the mechanisms that underlie the reported improvements. It is known that neural oscillations form traveling waves across the brain during various cognitive functions (Bhattacharya et al., 2022). In this study, we use different flickering light frequencies as entrainment input and investigate the spatiotemporal pattern of neural activity modulated by visual entrainment which appears as a traveling wave across the posterior‐frontal pathway.MethodEEG data recorded from young healthy adults were analyzed during multi‐trial flickering light stimulation at 10, 15, 20, 22, and 30Hz frequencies. In order to analyze the quality of posterior‐frontal waves, the spatiotemporal phase pattern was measured over the head midline. The wave quality was defined as the consistency of the spatiotemporal phase pattern during consecutive time intervals, and the quality of entrainment was defined as the intensity of the power spectral density at the input frequency.ResultDuring the resting state, different wave patterns traveling across the frontoparietal link are canceled out. However, visual stimulation invigorates the forward wave from the sensory (posterior – visual) region to the upstream area (frontal lobe) at the target frequency compared to the baseline. Meanwhile, in contrast to the forward wave, traveling wave in the backward direction does not show noticeable presence at the stimulation frequency. Furthermore, as the entrainment quality increases, the wave pattern consistency is improved for all stimulating frequencies (Figs. 1, 2).ConclusionThe forward wave induced during non‐invasive visual stimulation represents long‐range activity along the posterior‐frontal pathway known to be activated during sensory processing and inference. The observed correlation between the wave’s quality and the quality of entrainment at the target frequency points to the mechanism underlying the therapeutic effects of gamma entrainment.