Gating of Human Theta Oscillations by a Working Memory Task

By Sridhar Raghavachari, Michael J. Kahana, D. Rizzuto, Jeremy B. Caplan, M. Kirschen, B. Bourgeois, J. Madsen, John E. Lisman. Journal of Neuroscience, 2001

772 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Electrode grids on the cortical surface of epileptic patients provide a unique opportunity to observe brain activity with high temporal–spatial resolution and high signal-to-noise ratio during a cognitive task. Previous work showed that large-amplitude theta frequency oscillations occurred intermittently during a maze navigation task, but it was unclear whether theta related to the spatial or working memory components of the task. To determine whether theta occurs during a nonspatial task, we made recordings while subjects performed the Sternberg working memory task. Our results show event-related theta and reveal a new phenomenon, the cognitive “gating” of a brain oscillation: at many cortical sites, the amplitude of theta oscillations increased dramatically at the start of the trial, continued through all phases of the trial, including the delay period, and decreased sharply at the end. Gating could be seen in individual trials and varying the duration of the trial systematically varied the period of gating. These results suggest that theta oscillations could have an important role in organizing multi-item working memory.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4a104dfee2541203e20f67361cb79c8a01094b2e

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Citations in the corpus

Theta Rhythms Coordinate Hippocampal–Prefrontal Interactions in a Spatial Memory Task (2005, background): “spatial exploration in rodents [15], working memory in primates [16], and navigation and working memory in humans [17,18].”
Theta and Gamma Oscillations Predict Encoding and Retrieval of Declarative Memory (2006, background): “, 2005) and humans (Gevins et al., 1997; Sarnthein et al., 1998; Raghavachari et al., 2001; Tallon-Baudry et al., 2001; Jensen and Tesche, 2002; Howard et al., 2003; Kaiser and Lutzenberger, 2005).”
Frontal Midline Theta Oscillations during Working Memory Maintenance and Episodic Encoding and Retrieval (2013, background): “In addition to mPFC, several lines of evidence indicate a close relationship between FMT and activity in the " default mode network " (DMN; Raichle et al., 2001), a network of brain regions that is heavily interconnected with the mPFC (Kondo et al., 2005; Parvizi et al., 2006).”
Frontal theta activity in humans increases with memory load in a working memory task (2002, background): “…numerous reports on the modulation of theta band activity in humans performing episodic and working memory tasks (Burgess & Gruzelier, 1997; Gevins et al., 1997; Doppelmayr et al., 1998; Kahana et al., 1999; Klimesch, 1999; Tesche & Karhu, 2000; Raghavachari et al., 2001; de Araujo et al., 2002).”
Theta and Gamma Oscillations during Encoding Predict Subsequent Recall (2003, background): “, 2003), verbal and spatial working memory (Gevins et al., 1997; Krause et al., 2000; Tesche and Karhu, 2000; Raghavachari et al., 2001; Rizzuto et al., 2003), and item recognition (Klimesch et al.”
Frontal midline EEG dynamics during working memory (2005, background): “www.elsevier.com/locate/ynimg NeuroImage 27 (2005) 341 – 356 Frontal midline EEG dynamics during working memory Julie Onton,* Arnaud Delorme, and Scott Makeig”
Beyond ERPs: Oscillatory neuronal dynamics (2012, positive): “A clear relationship between theta-band oscillations and WM has also been found using intracranial recordings in humans (Raghavachari et al., 2001; Rizzuto et al., 2003).”
Rhythms of the brain (2006, methodology): “neous fluctuation of activity and associated fMRI and PET signals prompted Raichle et al. (2001) to question the validity of the widespread “baseline subtraction” method of imaging.”
Gamma oscillations correlate with working memory load in humans. (2003, background): “For example, a study using very similar methods (Raghavachari et al., 2001) found that at many cortical sites theta oscillations, which were visible in raw traces, increased (2- to 10-fold) at the beginning of each trial, remained elevated during the trial, and decreased dramatically at the end of e”
The Theta-Gamma Neural Code (2013, positive): “Several studies in humans have reported sustained theta band cortical activity during the delay period (Gevins et al., 1997; Jensen and Tesche, 2002; Raghavachari et al., 2001; Scheeringa et al., 2009), pointing to a role for theta in working memory.”
Neurophysiological and Computational Principles of Cortical Rhythms in Cognition (2010, background): “Theta rhythm has also been observed in the neocortex (150, 390, 474, 489, 516, 790).”
Phase Synchrony among Neuronal Oscillations in the Human Cortex (2005, background): “In humans, -band (4 –7 Hz) (Raghavachari et al., 2001; Halgren et al., 2002) and -band (7–14 Hz) (Halgren et al.”
Estimating workload using EEG spectral power and ERPs in the n-back task (2012, background): “Theta increases as task requirements increase (e.g. Miyata et al 1990, Jensen and Tesche 2002, Esposito et al 2009, Raghavachari et al 2001).”