Abstract
Selective routing of information between cortical areas is required in order to combine different sources of information according to cognitive demand. Recent experiments have suggested that alpha band activity originating from the pulvinar coordinates this inter-areal cortical communication. Using a computer model we investigated whether top-down induced shifts in the relative alpha phase between two cortical areas could modulate cortical communication, quantified in terms of changes in gamma band coherence between them. The network model was comprised of two uni-directionally connected neuronal populations of spiking neurons, each representing a cortical area. We find that the phase difference of the alpha oscillations modulating the two neuronal populations strongly affected the interregional gamma-band neuronal coherence. We confirmed that a higher gamma band coherence also resulted in more efficient transmission of spiking information between cortical areas, thereby confirming the value of gamma coherence as a proxy for cortical information transmission. In a model where both neuronal populations were connected bi-directionally, the relative alpha phase determined the directionality of communication between the populations. Our results show the feasibility of a physiological realistic mechanism for routing information in the brain based on coupled oscillations. Our model results in a set of testable predictions regarding phase shifts in alpha oscillations under different task demands requiring experimental quantification of neuronal oscillations in different regions in e.g. attention paradigms.
Highlights
The selective routing of information between neocortical areas is important for efficient taskspecific communication
To study communication between the neocortical areas we modeled each population as a local network of interconnected regular spiking excitatory (E) and inhibitory (I) neurons
A modulatory input to the cells in the alpha frequency band can be interpreted as a slow variation of the input currents, appealing to the results shown in Fig 2, we can expect the gamma power and frequency to vary with the alpha phase
Summary
The selective routing of information between neocortical areas is important for efficient taskspecific communication. Since it is impossible for the brain to simultaneously process all the incoming sensory information, it is crucial to enhance the processing of the most relevant information for the task at hand while at the same time ignoring irrelevant or distracting information. This process of selective attention modulates neural activity both in early visual as well as their down-stream areas [1]. We here explore a mechanism whereby the communication between two lower-order sensory areas is coordinated by a third area inducing phase shifts in slow oscillations This coordination serves to increase or decrease the efficiency of information transfer depending on task demands. We use the coherence between fast oscillations in these two areas as a proxy for efficiency of information transfer
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