High-frequency activity in human visual cortex is modulated by visual motion strength.

Full Abstract

A central goal in systems neuroscience is to understand how the brain encodes the intensity of sensory features. We used whole-head magnetoencephalography to investigate whether frequency-specific neuronal activity in the human visual cortex is systematically modulated by the intensity of an elementary sensory feature such as visual motion. Visual stimulation induced a tonic increase of neuronal activity at frequencies above 50 Hz. In order to define a functional frequency band of neuronal activity, we parametrically investigated which frequency band displays the strongest monotonic increase of responses with strength of visual motion. Consistently in all investigated subjects, this analysis resulted in a functional frequency band in the high gamma range from about 60 to 100 Hz in which activity reliably increased with visual motion strength. Using distributed source reconstruction, we found that this increase of high-frequency neuronal activity originates from several extrastriate cortical regions specialized in motion processing. We conclude that high-frequency activity in the human visual motion pathway may be relevant for encoding the intensity of visual motion signals.

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Author information

Author/s: Siegel, Markus (M); Donner, Tobias H (TH); Oostenveld, Robert (R); Fries, Pascal (P); Engel, Andreas K (AK);

Affiliation: Department of Neurophysiology and Pathophysiology, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, University of Hamburg, 20246 Hamburg, Germany. m.siegel(-atsign-)uke.uni-hamburg.de

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Journal: Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) (Cereb Cortex), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2007-Mar; vol 17 (issue 3) : pp 732-41

Dates: Created 2007/02/09; Completed 2007/04/18;

PMID: 16648451, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 12/26/2008)

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Motion Perception - physiology
Periodicity
Photic Stimulation
Psychophysics
Visual Cortex - physiology

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