Spatial Directionality Found in Frontal-Parietal Attentional Networks

Abstract

Research in last few years on neurophysiology focused on several areas across the cortex during cognitive processing to determine the dominant direction of electrical activity. However, information about the frequency and direction of episodic synchronization related to higher cognitive functions remain unclear. Our aim was to determine whether neural oscillations carry perceptual information as spatial patterns across the cortex, which could be found in the scalp EEG of human subjects while being engaged in visual sensory stimulation. Magnitude squared coherence of neural activity during task states that “finger movement with Eyes Open (EO) or Eyes Wandering (EW)” among all electrode combinations has the smallest standard deviation and variations. Additionally, the highest coherence among the electrode pairs occurred between alpha (8-12 Hz) and beta (12-16 Hz) ranges. Our results indicate that alpha rhythms seem to be regulated during activities when an individual is focused on a given task. Beta activity, which has also been implicated in cognitive processing to neural oscillations, is seen in our work as a manner to integrate external stimuli to higher cognitive activation. We have found spatial network organization which served to classify the EEG epochs in time with respect to the stimuli class. Our findings suggest that cortical neural signaling utilizes alpha-beta phase coupling during cognitive processing states, where beta activity has been implicated in shifting cognitive states. Significance. Our approach has found frontoparietal attentional mechanisms in shifting brain states which could provide new insights into understanding the global cerebral dynamics of intentional activity and reflect how the brain allocates resources during tasking and cognitive processing states.