Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience Integrative Neuroscience Neural Synchrony in Cortical Networks: History, Concept and Current Status

By Peter J. Uhlhaas, Gordon Pipa, Bruss Lima, Lucia Melloni, Sergio Neuenschwander, Danko Nikolic, Wolf Singer

751 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Following the discovery of context-dependent synchronization of oscillatory neuronal responses in the visual system, the role of neural synchrony in cortical networks has been expanded to provide a general mechanism for the coordination of distributed neural activity patterns. In the current paper, we present an update of the status of this hypothesis through summarizing recent results from our laboratory that suggest important new insights regarding the mechanisms, function and relevance of this phenomenon. In the first part, we present recent results derived from animal experiments and mathematical simulations that provide novel explanations and mechanisms for zero and nero-zero phase lag synchronization. In the second part, we shall discuss the role of neural synchrony for expectancy during perceptual organization and its role in conscious experience. This will be followed by evidence that indicates that in addition to supporting conscious cognition, neural synchrony is abnormal in major brain disorders, such as schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorders. We conclude this paper with suggestions for further research as well as with critical issues that need to be addressed in future studies.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Sensory Systems

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Citations in the corpus

On the Binding Problem in Artificial Neural Networks (2020, background): “…synchronized oscillatory behavior of individual neurons to perceptual grouping (Usher and Donnelly, 1998; Tallon-Baudry and Bertrand, 1999), attention (Niebur et al., 2002), and sensory-motor integration (Pesce Ibarra, 2017; Engel and Fries, 2010; see also Uhlhaas et al., 2009 for an overview).”
Bayesian Computation Emerges in Generic Cortical Microcircuits through Spike-Timing-Dependent Plasticity (2013, background): “This has already been shown for neurons in close proximity [107] but also for neurons in different cortical areas [108,109].”
The Metastable Brain (2014, neutral): “…has received by far themost attention in the literature (Ermentrout and Kopell, 1991; Bressler and 36 Neuron 81, January 8, 2014 ª2014 Elsevier Inc. Kelso, 2001; Bressler and Tognoli, 2006; Fries, 2005; Singer, 2005; Singer and Gray, 1995; Varela et al., 2001; Uhlhaas et al., 2009; Wang, 2010).”
Neuronal Synchrony in Complex-Valued Deep Networks (2013, background): “…posit that synchrony is a key element of how the cortex processes sensory information (e.g. von der Malsburg, 1981; Crick, 1984; Singer & Gray, 1995; Fries, 2005; Uhlhaas et al., 2009; Stanley, 2013), though these theories are also contested (e.g. Shadlen & Movshon, 1999; Ray & Maunsell, 2010).”
Abnormal neural oscillations and synchrony in schizophrenia (2010, background): “These temporal correlations are functionally relevant as there is abundant evidence for a close relationship between the occurrence of oscillations and cognitive and behavioural responses, such as perceptual grouping , attention-dependent stimulus selection, working memory and consciousness ( Table”
Phase transfer entropy: A novel phase-based measure for directed connectivity in networks coupled by oscillatory interactions (2014, background): “These result suggest that phase synchronization in cortical networks may coordinate communication across anatomically distributed processing (J. M. Palva et al., 2010; Palva and Palva, 2012, 2011; Uhlhaas et al., 2009).”
White matter maturation reshapes structural connectivity in the late developing human brain (2010, background): “Nonhuman primate literature suggests that further developmental changes in neuronal functional specification likely occur through intracortical dendritic and neurochemical modulation (17).”
Neurophysiological and Computational Principles of Cortical Rhythms in Cognition (2010, background): “In another study, schizophrenic patients were found to perform worse than the control group in a perception task (detection of human faces in degraded pictures); at the same time, MEG over parietal cortical sites displayed sensory responses concentrated in the beta/ gamma frequency range, that was s”
Cortical travelling waves: mechanisms and computational principles (2018, background): “These proposed functions have traditionally been thought to involve precise zero-lag synchrony 11,12 , in which oscillations across single areas or distant regions in the cortex are aligned perfectly in time.”
The development of coping. (2007, background): “These suggest age-related improvements in white matter connectivity but also functional integration as seen in spontaneous waves of synchronized activity (Fair et al., 2008; Uhlhaas et al., 2009).”
The Restless Brain (2011, positive): “…frequencies (i.e., their power spectral density) where particular attention has been paid to the gamma frequency band (Leopold et al., 2003) because of its association with cognition (Fries, 2009; Uhlhaas et al., 2009); and raw frequencies that approximate that of the spontaneous BOLD signal.”
Understanding the neural bases of bodily self-consciousness: recent achievements and main challenges (2023, background): “2 Paucity of causal evidence, instead of correlational evidence, in the study of the neural bases of BSC”), together with the description of their connectivity and pattern of communication (Uhlhaas et al., 2009).”