Probing cortical oscillations with transcranial stimulation

Abstract

Event Abstract Back to Event Probing cortical oscillations with transcranial stimulation Bradley R. Postle1* 1 University of Wisconsin-Madison, United States The past decade has witnessed an explosion of interest in cortical oscillations as a fundamental property of brain function. Oscillatory dynamics have been implicated in, for example, perception, binding information across anatomically distributed networks, navigation, memory, motor control, and conscious awareness. But although the role of neuronal oscillations in some physiological states, such as sleep, is universally accepted, the importance of oscillations for many classes of behavior remains unclear. Are the behaviorally correlated oscillations that are present in every type of physiological measurement, from intracranial electrophysiology to functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), essential of the functions under study, or mere epiphenomena? Correlational techniques, no matter how technologically or analytically sophisticated, can never decisively answer this question. The recently developed procedures featured in this symposium, in contrast, offer a novel way to investigate the role of cortical oscillations in brain function. They do so by simultaneously stimulating the brain and measuring the consequences of this stimulation on brain activity. They not only bring to bear the principle that perturbation supports stronger inference about brain-behavior causality than does correlation, they also allow for nuanced investigation of oscillatory dynamics by, for example, controlling population-level oscillations via entrainment to an exogenous source, or observing individual variation in response to the selective biasing of oscillations within specific frequency bands. This symposium will illustrate the power of these approaches within four research domains: neural correlates of consciousness, visual perception and attention, working memory, and motor control. Keywords: cortical oscillations, fMRI Conference: XI International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON XI), Palma, Mallorca, Spain, 25 Sep - 29 Sep, 2011. Presentation Type: Introduction Topic: Symposium 14: Probing Cortical Oscillations with Transcranial Stimulation Citation: Postle BR (2011). Probing cortical oscillations with transcranial stimulation. Conference Abstract: XI International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON XI). doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2011.207.00545 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 14 Nov 2011; Published Online: 28 Nov 2011. * Correspondence: Dr. Bradley R Postle, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, United States, postle@wisc.edu Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Bradley R Postle Google Bradley R Postle Google Scholar Bradley R Postle PubMed Bradley R Postle Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.