Neurophysiological markers of contextual processing: the relationship between P3b and Gamma synchrony and their modulation by arousal, performance and individual differences

Schizophrenia, Bipolar Disorder and Pre-Attentional Inhibitory Deficits

According to recent findings schizophrenia and bipolar disorder as separate disease entities manifest similarities in neuropsychological functioning. Typical disturbances in both disorders are related to sensory gating deficits characterized by decreased inhibitory functions in responses to various insignificant perceptual signals which are experimentally tested by event related potentials (ERP) and measured P50 wave. In this context, recent findings implicate that disrupted binding and disintegration of consciousness in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder that are related to inhibitory deficits reflected in P50 response may explain similarities in psychotic disturbances in both disorders. With this aim, this review summarizes literature about P50 in both schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

Event-related delta, theta, alpha and gamma correlates to auditory oddball processing during Vipassana meditation

Long-term Vipassana meditators sat in meditation vs. a control (instructed mind wandering) states for 25 min, electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded and condition order counterbalanced. For the last 4 min, a three-stimulus auditory oddball series was presented during both meditation and control periods through headphones and no task imposed. Time-frequency analysis demonstrated that meditation relative to the control condition evinced decreased evoked delta (2-4 Hz) power to distracter stimuli concomitantly with a greater event-related reduction of late (500-900 ms) alpha-1 (8-10 Hz) activity, which indexed altered dynamics of attentional engagement to distracters. Additionally, standard stimuli were associated with increased early event-related alpha phase synchrony (inter-trial coherence) and evoked theta (4-8 Hz) phase synchrony, suggesting enhanced processing of the habituated standard background stimuli. Finally, during meditation, there was a greater differential early-evoked gamma power to the different stimulus classes. Correlation analysis indicated that this effect stemmed from a meditation state-related increase in early distracter-evoked gamma power and phase synchrony specific to longer-term expert practitioners. The findings suggest that Vipassana meditation evokes a brain state of enhanced perceptual clarity and decreased automated reactivity.

A new interpretation of P300 responses upon analysis of coherences

Previous studies on cognitive dynamics showed that oscillatory responses of P300 are composed of mainly delta and theta responses. In the present study, for the first time, the long-distance intra-hemispheric event related coherence (auditory oddball paradigm) and evoked coherence (simple sound) were compared in order to evaluate the effects of cognitive tasks on the long-distance coherences. Seventeen healthy subjects (8 female, 9 male) were included in the study. The coherence was analyzed for delta (1-3.5 Hz), theta (4-7.5 Hz) and alpha (8-13 Hz) frequency ranges for (F(3)-P(3), F(4)-P(4), F(3)-T(7), F(4)-T(8), F(3)-O(1,) F(4)-O(2)) electrode pairs. The coherence to target responses were higher than the non-target and simple auditory response coherence. This difference is significant for the delta coherence for both hemispheres and for theta coherences over the left hemisphere. The highest coherences were recorded at fronto-temporal locations for all frequency bands (delta, theta, alpha). Furthermore, fronto-parietal coherences were higher than the fronto-occipital coherences for all frequency bands (delta, theta, alpha).These results show that the fronto-temporal and fronto-parietal connections are most relevant for the identification of the target signal. This analysis open the way for a new interpretation of dynamic localization results during cognitive tasks.

Neural synchrony in schizophrenia: from networks to new treatments

Evidence is accumulating that brain regions communicate with each other in the temporal domain, relying on coincidence of neural activity to detect phasic relationships among neurons and neural assemblies. This coordination between neural populations has been described as "self-organizing," an "emergent property" of neural networks arising from the temporal synchrony between synaptic transmission and firing of distinct neuronal populations. Evidence is also accumulating that communication and coordination failures between different brain regions may account for a wide range of problems in schizophrenia, from psychosis to cognitive dysfunction. We review the knowledge about the functional neuroanatomy and neurochemistry of neural oscillations and oscillation abnormalities in schizophrenia. Based on this, we argue that we can begin to use oscillations, across frequencies, to do translational studies to understand the neural basis of schizophrenia.