1. Cycle 10: Brain-state dependence
Cycle 7: ongoing oscillations
- Sleep rhythms
Cycle 8: perturbation of oscillations
- experience changes ongoing rhythms
Cycle 9 : gamma
- stimulus-evoked oscillations
Encoding external oscillations (acoustics)
rate coding of pitch
phase-locking to <50Hz ‘envelope’
non-active sites still had ‘internal’ SFC
How could internal, ongoing signals (brain states) modify perception, action?

2. Cycle 10: Brain-state dependence
Dynamic Brain Sources of Visual Evoked Responses
Makeig et al., Science 2002
It has been long debated whether averaged electrical responses recorded from the scalp result from stimulus-evoked brain events or stimulus-induced changes in ongoing brain dynamics. In a human visual selective attention task, we show that nontarget event-related potentials were mainly generated by partial stimulus-induced phase resetting of multiple EEG processes.
Fig. 2. The average ERP is produced by stimulus-induced phase resetting of ongoing EEG activity. Rectangular images, alpha phase-sorted "ERP-image" plots in which each horizontal line in the rectangular image represents a (color-coded) single trial, here at posterior central scalp site POz. Note the color uV scale on the right. The two ERP images show two (>1200) trial subsets consisting of the 10% of trials drawn from each of the 15 subjects having the highest or lowest power, respectively, at the peak alpha frequency (10.25 Hz) in the indicated poststimulus time window (0 to 293 ins, dotted lines). Before plotting, each trial subset was sorted (top-to-bottom) by its relative alpha phase in the same time window. The sigmoidal shape of the phase-sorted poststimulus alpha wave fronts (red and blue) in the highest-alpha trial subset (upper image) indicate the uneven distribution of poststimulus alpha phase. Upper traces below show the averaged ERPs for the high-alpha (brown trace) and low-alpha (blue trace) trial subsets. Lower traces show the time course of intertrial coherence (ITC) (1 1) at Hz for the same trial subsets, together with (red line) the (P = 0.02) ITC significance level. The prominent negative (Ni) peak in the highest-alpha ERP waveform (lower orange arrow) is the sum of more negative than positive single-trial values (between upper orange arrows) at the same response latency.

3. Cycle 10: Brain-state dependence

4. Cycle 10: Brain-state dependence
Some stimulus-related responses may involve a modulation of ongoing oscillations…so what?
Neural processing advantage
Michael L presentation,
saccade -> phase resetting in 3-8 Hz put V1 into ‘ideal’ spiking phase
ideal: shorter latency,
less variable
concentrated spiking window
“Neurons fire best in preferred cortical state” p

5. Cycle 10: Brain-state dependence
Some stimulus-related responses may involve a modulation of ongoing oscillations…so what?
Behavioural advantage
Palva et al., 2005
‘Just perceivable’ somatosensory stim
perceived when:
- alpha theta power incr.
- SS, frontal, parietal regions
- presented in ideal phase
more examples:
PFC 5-25 Hz predicts
occipital evoked response
and motor reaction time,
gamma predicts memory,
theta predicts conditioning

6. Cycle 10: Brain-state dependence
Neural and behavioural responses are often influenced (or determined) by ongoing activity
trial averaging across varied brain state washes out the ‘ongoing’ influences
Requiring an ‘ideal’ state may seem limiting, but may allow our experienced brains to do their best work:
+ exert faster responses under predictable circumstances
+ control when, where and how long to attend to parts of the environment
+ shape strength of responses by ‘context’ allowing flexibility in responses