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Cerebral Cortex Advance Access published online on April 28, 2006
Cerebral Cortex, doi:10.1093/cercor/bhk025
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© The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Article

High-Frequency Activity in Human Visual Cortex Is Modulated by Visual Motion Strength

Markus Siegel 1 *, Tobias H. Donner 1, Robert Oostenveld 2, Pascal Fries 3, and Andreas K. Engel 4

1 Department of Neurophysiology and Pathophysiology, Center of Experimental Medicine, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, University of Hamburg, 20246 Hamburg, Germany; F.C. Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging, Radboud University Nijmegen, 6525 EN Nijmegen, The Netherlands
2 F.C. Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging, Radboud University Nijmegen, 6525 EN Nijmegen, The Netherlands; Center for Sensory-Motor Interaction, Aalborg University, 9220 Aalborg, Denmark
3 F.C. Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging, Radboud University Nijmegen, 6525 EN Nijmegen, The Netherlands; Department of Biophysics, Radboud University Nijmegen, 6525 EZ Nijmegen, The Netherlands
4 Department of Neurophysiology and Pathophysiology, Center of Experimental Medicine, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, University of Hamburg, 20246 Hamburg, Germany

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
Markus Siegel, E-mail: m.siegel{at}uke.uni-hamburg.de


  Abstract

A central goal in systems neuroscience is to understand how the brain encodes the intensity of sensory features. We used whole-head magnetoencephalography to investigate whether frequency-specific neuronal activity in the human visual cortex is systematically modulated by the intensity of an elementary sensory feature such as visual motion. Visual stimulation induced a tonic increase of neuronal activity at frequencies above 50 Hz. In order to define a functional frequency band of neuronal activity, we parametrically investigated which frequency band displays the strongest monotonic increase of responses with strength of visual motion. Consistently in all investigated subjects, this analysis resulted in a functional frequency band in the high gamma range from about 60 to 100 Hz in which activity reliably increased with visual motion strength. Using distributed source reconstruction, we found that this increase of high-frequency neuronal activity originates from several extrastriate cortical regions specialized in motion processing. We conclude that high-frequency activity in the human visual motion pathway may be relevant for encoding the intensity of visual motion signals.

Keywords: area MT; gamma band; MEG; motion discrimination; oscillation; synchronization.
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