Shaping Functional Architecture by Oscillatory Alpha Activity: Gating by Inhibition

By Ole Jensen, Ali Mazaheri. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2010

3,135 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In order to understand the working brain as a network, it is essential to identify the mechanisms by which information is gated between regions. We here propose that information is gated by inhibiting task-irrelevant regions, thus routing information to task-relevant regions. The functional inhibition is reflected in oscillatory activity in the alpha band (8–13 Hz). From a physiological perspective the alpha activity provides pulsed inhibition reducing the processing capabilities of a given area. Active processing in the engaged areas is reflected by neuronal synchronization in the gamma band (30–100 Hz) accompanied by an alpha band decrease. According to this framework the brain could be studied as a network by investigating cross-frequency interactions between gamma and alpha activity. Specifically the framework predicts that optimal task performance will correlate with alpha activity in task-irrelevant areas. In this review we will discuss the empirical support for this framework. Given that alpha activity is by far the strongest signal recorded by EEG and MEG, we propose that a major part of the electrophysiological activity detected from the working brain reflects gating by inhibition.

Subfields: Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience, Cognitive Neuroscience

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4fcb4b2d5b446aefc57a552bcc44bfeca182d6b8

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In Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience

In Cognitive Neuroscience

Citations in the corpus

Neural correlates of the LSD experience revealed by multimodal neuroimaging (2016, background): “Cortical alpha has been hypothesized to serve a general inhibitory function, filtering out “stimulus-irrelevant” information (34).”
Switching between internal and external modes: A multiscale learning principle (2017, background): “Sensitivity to ex-ternal visual stimuli appears to be particularly enhanced at the troughs of individual cycles (Busch, Dubois, & VanRullen, 2009; Jensen & Mazaheri, 2010).”
Working Memory 2.0 (2018, neutral): “…inputs results in increased gamma and increased alpha and beta occurs for modalities or locations that are unattended (Buffalo et al., 2011; Fries et al., 2001; Haegens et al., 2011; Jensen and Mazaheri, 2010; van Ede et al., 2017; Leszczynski et al., 2017; Popov et al., 2017; Wolff et al., 2017).”
Alpha and gamma oscillations characterize feedback and feedforward processing in monkey visual cortex (2014, background): “The increase of the α-rhythm when the RF fell on the background compared with when it fell on the figure and compared with the prestimulus period is in line with previous reports that α indexes the suppression of irrelevant information (10, 11).”
Combining non-invasive transcranial brain stimulation with neuroimaging and electrophysiology: Current approaches and future perspectives (2016, neutral): “, 2009), proposed to gate information processing by means of pulsed inhibition (Jensen and Mazaheri, 2010; Klimesch et al., 2007).”
Increased Alpha-Band Power during the Retention of Shapes and Shape-Location Associations in Visual Short-Term Memory (2011, methodology): “In the present study, we test the predictions of the inhibitory view of alpha-band oscillations proposed by Jensen and Mazaheri (2010) and those of the object selection and maintenance hypothesis using a delayed-recognition paradigm in which the presence and task relevance of shape information was…”
α-Oscillations in the monkey sensorimotor network influence discrimination performance by rhythmical inhibition of neuronal spiking (2011, background): “In particular, α-activity might serve to shape the state of sensory brain regions to direct the flow of information and optimize performance (8).”
Social Consumer Neuroscience: Neurophysiological Measures of Advertising Effectiveness in a Social Context (2017, positive): “For instance, an increase in the alpha frequency band (8 to 12 Hz) over speciﬁc brain cortical regions has been inversely related to underlying brain activity (Jensen and Mazaheri 2010).”
EEG and MEG: relevance to neuroscience. (2013, positive): “In this way, a modulation can be a mechanism to optimize signal-to-noise ratio promoting the conditions for efficient information processing (Jensen and Mazaheri, 2010; in line with Klimesch et al., 2007; Klimesch, 2012).”
Entrainment of brain oscillations by transcranial alternating current stimulation. (2014, positive): “Role of Alpha Oscillations for Visual Perception In general, alpha is assumed to be a rhythm that can actively suppress processing of irrelevant sensory information and therefore direct information flow to task-relevant neuronal structures (gating by inhibition hypothesis, reviewed in [22–24]).”
EEG datasets for motor imagery brain–computer interface (2017, positive): “At 500 msec, the occipital areas were activated (“alpha inhibition” [1, 16]).”
Neural Cross-Frequency Coupling: Connecting Architectures, Mechanisms, and Functions. (2015, positive): “Accordingly, alpha increases are typically accompanied by gamma decreases in occipital areas [10,50,51].”
Inter- and intra-individual variability in alpha peak frequency (2014, background): “…c,d, George Wallis d,e, Paul J. Harrison c, Anna C. Nobre d,e a Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, USA b Cognitive Neuroscience and Schizophrenia Program, Nathan Kline Institute, Orangeburg, USA c Department of Psychiatry, Warneford…”