Cross-frequency coupling during auditory perception in human cortex

Effects on resting-state EEG phase-amplitude coupling in insomnia disorder patients following 1 Hz left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex rTMS

Despite burgeoning evidence for cortical hyperarousal in insomnia disorder, the existing results on electroencephalography spectral features are highly heterogeneous. Phase-amplitude coupling, which refers to the modulation of the low-frequency phase to a high-frequency amplitude, is probably a more sensitive quantitative measure for characterizing abnormal neural oscillations and explaining the therapeutic effect of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation in the treatment of patients with insomnia disorder. Sixty insomnia disorder patients were randomly divided into the active and sham treatment groups to receive 4 weeks of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation treatment. Behavioral assessments, resting-state electroencephalography recordings, and sleep polysomnography recordings were performed before and after repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation treatment. Forty good sleeper controls underwent the same assessment. We demonstrated that phase-amplitude coupling values in the frontal and temporal lobes were weaker in Insomnia disorder patients than in those with good sleeper controls at baseline and that phase-amplitude coupling values near the intervention area were significantly enhanced after active repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation treatment. Furthermore, the enhancement of phase-amplitude coupling values was significantly correlated with the improvement of sleep quality. This study revealed the potential of phase-amplitude coupling in assessing the severity of insomnia disorder and the efficacy of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation treatment, providing new insights on the abnormal physiological mechanisms and future treatments for insomnia disorder.

Altered fronto-central theta-gamma coupling in major depressive disorder during auditory steady-state responses

OBJECTIVE

Neural oscillations during sensory and cognitive events interact at different frequencies. However, such evidence in major depressive disorder (MDD) remains scarce. We explored the possible abnormal neural oscillations in MDD by analyzing theta-phase/gamma-amplitude coupling (TGC).

METHODS

Resting-state and auditory steady-state response (ASSR) electroencephalography recordings were obtained from 35 first-episode MDD and 35 healthy controls (HCs). TGC during rest, ASSR stimulation, and ASSR baseline between and within groups were analyzed to evaluate MDD alterations. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC), TGC comparison between MDD severity subgroups (mild, moderate, major), and correlations were investigated to determine the potential use of altered TGC for identifying MDD.

RESULTS

In MDD, left fronto-central TGC decreased during stimulation, while right fronto-central TGC increased during baseline. The area under ROC curve for altered TGC was 0.863. Furthermore, during stimulation, moderate and major MDD groups exhibited significantly lower TGC than mild group, and fronto-central TGC was negatively correlated with depression scale scores.

CONCLUSIONS

Our results provided the first evidence for an abnormal TGC response of fronto-central regions in MDD during an ASSR task. Importantly, altered TGC may be promising biomarkers of MDD.

SIGNIFICANCE

Our findings enhance the understanding of physiological mechanisms underlying MDD and aid in its clinical diagnosis.

Cross-frequency coupling in psychiatric disorders: A systematic review

Cross-frequency coupling (CFC), an electrophysiologically derived measure of oscillatory coupling in the brain, is believed to play a critical role in neuronal computation, learning and communication. It has received much recent attention in the study of both health and disease. We searched for literature that studied CFC during resting state and task-related activities during electroencephalography and magnetoencephalography in psychiatric disorders. Thirty-eight studies were identified, which included attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, Alzheimer's dementia, autism spectrum disorder, bipolar disorder, depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, social anxiety disorder and schizophrenia. The systematic review was registered with PROSPERO (ID#CRD42021224188). The current review indicates measurable differences exist between CFC in disease states vs. healthy controls. There was variance in CFC at different regions of the brain within the same psychiatric disorders, perhaps this could be explained by the mechanisms and functionality of CFC. There was heterogeneity in methodologies used, which may lead to spurious CFC analyses. Going forward, standardized methodologies need to be established and utilized in further research to understand the neuropathophysiology associated with psychiatric disorders.

Cross-Frequency Coupling in Cortical Processing of Speech

This study examines power-power cross-frequency coupling (CFC) between different frequency bands of cortical activity in normal-hearing (NH) listeners and its association to the processing temporal envelope (ENV) and temporal fine structure (TFS) of speech. CFC between alpha and theta bands and between gamma and theta bands was investigated when only ENV or TFS or the original speech itself were processed. Comparing the cortical activity in response to ENV and original speech, there was an increase in alpha-theta CFC and in gamma-theta CFC when listening to ENV alone. However, when comparing the response when to listening TFS alone, there was a reduction in gamma-theta CFC compared to the original speech and the alpha-theta CFC was comparable to the equivalent observed with original speech. The increase in CFC may suggest that there is more synchrony across different bands of cortical activity in processing ENV than TFS. These measures can serve as indicators when either ENV or TFS is perceived.

Motor and sensory cortical processing of neural oscillatory activities revealed by human swallowing using intracranial electrodes

Swallowing is attributed to the orchestration of motor output and sensory input. We hypothesized that swallowing can illustrate differences between motor and sensory neural processing. Eight epileptic participants fitted with intracranial electrodes over the orofacial cortex were asked to swallow a water bolus. Mouth opening and swallowing were treated as motor tasks, whereas water injection was treated as a sensory task. Phase-amplitude coupling between lower-frequency and high γ (HG) bands (75–150 Hz) was investigated. An α (10–16 Hz)-HG coupling appeared before motor-related HG power increases (burst), and a θ (5–9 Hz)-HG coupling appeared during sensory-related HG bursts. The peaks of motor-related coupling were 0.6–0.7 s earlier than that of HG power. The motor-related HG was modulated at the trough of the α oscillation, and the sensory-related HG amplitude was modulated at the peak of the θ oscillation. These contrasting results can help to elucidate the brain's sensory motor functions.

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Swallowing has two aspects; sensory input and motor output

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Phase-amplitude coupling showed differences of motor and sensory neural processing

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Coupling between the α and high γ band occurred before motor-related high γ activities

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Coupling between the θ and high γ band occurred during sensory-related high γ activities

Effects of Spatial Memory Processing on Hippocampal Ripples

Human High-Frequency-Oscillations (HFO) in the ripple band are oscillatory brain activity in the frequency range between 80 and 250 Hz. HFOs may comprise different subgroups that either play a role in physiologic or pathologic brain functions. An exact differentiation between physiologic and pathologic HFOs would help elucidate their relevance for cognitive and epileptogenic brain mechanisms, but the criteria for differentiating between physiologic and pathologic HFOs remain controversial. In particular, the separation of pathologic HFOs from physiologic HFOs could improve the identification of epileptogenic brain regions during the pre-surgical evaluation of epilepsy patients. In this study, we performed intracranial electroencephalography recordings from the hippocampus of epilepsy patients before, during, and after the patients completed a spatial navigation task. We isolated hippocampal ripples from the recordings and categorized the ripples into the putative pathologic group iesRipples, when they coincided with interictal spikes, and the putative physiologic group isolRipples, when they did not coincide with interictal spikes. We found that the occurrence of isolRipples significantly decreased during the task as compared to periods before and after the task. The rate of iesRipples was not modulated by the task. In patients who completed the spatial navigation task on two consecutive days, we furthermore examined the occurrence of ripples in the intervening night. We found that the rate of ripples that coincided with sleep spindles and were therefore putatively physiologic correlated with the performance improvement on the spatial navigation task, whereas the rate of all ripples did not show this relationship. Together, our results suggest that the differentiation of HFOs into putative physiologic and pathologic subgroups may help identify their role for spatial memory and memory consolidation processes. Conversely, excluding putative physiologic HFOs from putative pathologic HFOs may improve the HFO-based identification of epileptogenic brain regions in future studies.

Cross-Frequency Coupling Based Neuromodulation for Treating Neurological Disorders

Synchronous, rhythmic changes in the membrane polarization of neurons form oscillations in local field potentials. It is hypothesized that high-frequency brain oscillations reflect local cortical information processing, and low-frequency brain oscillations project information flow across larger cortical networks. This provides complex forms of information transmission due to interactions between oscillations at different frequency bands, which can be rendered with cross-frequency coupling (CFC) metrics. Phase-amplitude coupling (PAC) is one of the most common representations of the CFC. PAC reflects the coupling of the phase of oscillations in a specific frequency band to the amplitude of oscillations in another frequency band. In a normal brain, PAC accompanies multi-item working memory in the hippocampus, and changes in PAC have been associated with diseases such as schizophrenia, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), Alzheimer disease (AD), epilepsy, and Parkinson's disease (PD). The purpose of this article is to explore CFC across the central nervous system and demonstrate its correlation to neurological disorders. Results from previously published studies are reviewed to explore the significant role of CFC in large neuronal network communication and its abnormal behavior in neurological disease. Specifically, the association of effective treatment in PD such as dopaminergic medication and deep brain stimulation with PAC changes is described. Lastly, CFC analysis of the electrocorticographic (ECoG) signals recorded from the motor cortex of a Parkinson's disease patient and the parahippocampal gyrus of an epilepsy patient are demonstrated. This information taken together illuminates possible roles of CFC in the nervous system and its potential as a therapeutic target in disease states. This will require new neural interface technologies such as phase-dependent stimulation triggered by PAC changes, for the accurate recording, monitoring, and modulation of the CFC signal.

Multi-Regional Adaptation in Human Auditory Association Cortex

In auditory cortex, neural responses decrease with stimulus repetition, known as adaptation. Adaptation is thought to facilitate detection of novel sounds and improve perception in noisy environments. Although it is well established that adaptation occurs in primary auditory cortex, it is not known whether adaptation also occurs in higher auditory areas involved in processing complex sounds, such as speech. Resolving this issue is important for understanding the neural bases of adaptation and to avoid potential post-operative deficits after temporal lobe surgery for treatment of focal epilepsy. Intracranial electrocorticographic recordings were acquired simultaneously from electrodes implanted in primary and association auditory areas of the right (non-dominant) temporal lobe in a patient with complex partial seizures originating from the inferior parietal lobe. Simple and complex sounds were presented in a passive oddball paradigm. We measured changes in single-trial high-gamma power (70–150 Hz) and in regional and inter-regional network-level activity indexed by cross-frequency coupling. Repetitive tones elicited the greatest adaptation and corresponding increases in cross-frequency coupling in primary auditory cortex. Conversely, auditory association cortex showed stronger adaptation for complex sounds, including speech. This first report of multi-regional adaptation in human auditory cortex highlights the role of the non-dominant temporal lobe in suppressing neural responses to repetitive background sounds (noise). These results underscore the clinical utility of functional mapping to avoid potential post-operative deficits including increased listening difficulties in noisy, real-world environments.