Cerebral Cortex Advance Access originally published online on August 22, 2006
Cerebral Cortex 2007 17(6):1476-1485; doi:10.1093/cercor/bhl059
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Phase Coupling in a Cerebro-Cerebellar Network at 8–13 Hz during Reading
1 Brain Research Unit, Low Temperature Laboratory, Helsinki University of Technology, FIN-02015 TKK, Finland, 2 School of Psychology, Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200, Australia, 3 School of Biology and Psychology, University of Newcastle, Newcastle upon Tyne NE2 4HH, UK, 4 Department of Cognitive Neuroscience, Faculty of Psychology, University of Maastricht, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands
Address correspondence to Jan Kujala, Brain Research Unit, Low Temperature Laboratory, PO Box 2200, 02015 HUT, Finland. Email: jjkujala{at}neuro.hut.fi.
Words forming a continuous story were presented to 9 subjects at frequencies ranging from 5 to 30 Hz, determined individually to render comprehension easy, effortful, or practically impossible. We identified a left-hemisphere neural network sensitive to reading performance directly from the time courses of activation in the brain, derived from magnetoencephalography data. Regardless of the stimulus rate, communication within the long-range neural network occurred at a frequency of 8–13 Hz. Our coherence-based detection of interconnected nodes reproduced several brain regions that have been previously reported as active in reading tasks, based on traditional contrast estimates. Intriguingly, the face motor cortex and the cerebellum, typically associated with speech production, and the orbitofrontal cortex, linked to visual recognition and working memory, additionally emerged as densely connected components of the network. The left inferior occipitotemporal cortex, involved in early letter-string or word-specific processing, and the cerebellum turned out to be the main forward driving nodes of the network. Synchronization within a subset of nodes formed by the left occipitotemporal, the left superior temporal, and orbitofrontal cortex was increased with the subjects' effort to comprehend the text. Our results link long-range neural synchronization and directionality with cognitive performance.
Key Words: causality • coherence • connectivity • language • magnetoencephalography • synchronization
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  M. Bonte, G. Valente, and E. Formisano Dynamic and Task-Dependent Encoding of Speech and Voice by Phase Reorganization of Cortical Oscillations J. Neurosci., February 11, 2009; 29(6): 1699 - 1706. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
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