Anna V. Butorina

Automatic ultrarapid activation and inhibition of cortical motor systems in spoken word comprehension

Significance The mechanisms through which our brain generates complex cognitive percepts from simple sensory and motor events remain unknown. An important question is whether the basic brain structures controlling movements and perceptions directly participate in higher-order cognitive processes such as language comprehension. Using neurophysiology, we found ultrarapid (starting at ∼80 ms) activations in the human motor cortex in response to unattended action-related verbs and nouns, with words related to different body parts activating corresponding body representations. Accompanying this category-specific activity was activation suppression by words with area-incompatible meaning, demonstrating operation of the neurophysiological principles of lateral/surround inhibition in language processing. These instant activations and deactivations emerging for words of different types in the absence of attention advocate automatic involvement of neural sensorimotor circuits in language comprehension. To address the hotly debated question of motor system involvement in language comprehension, we recorded neuromagnetic responses elicited in the human brain by unattended action-related spoken verbs and nouns and scrutinized their timecourse and neuroanatomical substrates. We found that already very early on, from ∼80 ms after disambiguation point when the words could be identified from the available acoustic information, both verbs and nouns produced characteristic somatotopic activations in the motor strip, with words related to different body parts activating the corresponding body representations. Strikingly, along with this category-specific activation, we observed suppression of motor-cortex activation by competitor words with incompatible semantics, documenting operation of the neurophysiological principles of lateral/surround inhibition in neural word processing. The extremely early onset of these activations and deactivations, their emergence in the absence of attention, and their similar presence for words of different lexical classes strongly suggest automatic involvement of motor-specific circuits in the perception of action-related language.

Auditory cortex responses to clicks and sensory modulation difficulties in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD).

Auditory sensory modulation difficulties are common in autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and may stem from a faulty arousal system that compromises the ability to regulate an optimal response. To study neurophysiological correlates of the sensory modulation difficulties, we recorded magnetic field responses to clicks in 14 ASD and 15 typically developing (TD) children. We further analyzed the P100m, which is the most prominent component of the auditory magnetic field response in children and may reflect preattentive arousal processes. The P100m was rightward lateralized in the TD, but not in the ASD children, who showed a tendency toward P100m reduction in the right hemisphere (RH). The atypical P100m lateralization in the ASD subjects was associated with greater severity of sensory abnormalities assessed by Short Sensory Profile, as well as with auditory hypersensitivity during the first two years of life. The absence of right-hemispheric predominance of the P100m and a tendency for its right-hemispheric reduction in the ASD children suggests disturbance of the RH ascending reticular brainstem pathways and/or their thalamic and cortical projections, which in turn may contribute to abnormal arousal and attention. The correlation of sensory abnormalities with atypical, more leftward, P100m lateralization suggests that reduced preattentive processing in the right hemisphere and/or its shift to the left hemisphere may contribute to abnormal sensory behavior in ASD.

Somatomotor mu rhythm amplitude correlates with rigidity during deep brain stimulation in Parkinsonian patients.

OBJECTIVE Parkinsonian patients have abnormal oscillatory activity within the basal ganglia-thalamocortical circuitry. Particularly, excessive beta band oscillations are thought to be associated with akinesia. We studied whether cortical spontaneous activity is modified by deep brain stimulation (DBS) in advanced Parkinsons disease and if the modifications are related to the clinical symptoms. METHODS We studied the effects of bilateral electrical stimulation of subthalamic nucleus (STN) on cortical spontaneous activity by magnetoencephalography (MEG) in 11 Parkinsonian patients. The artifacts produced by DBS were suppressed by tSSS algorithm. RESULTS During DBS, UPDRS (Unified Parkinsons Disease Rating Scale) rigidity scores correlated with 6-10 Hz and 12-20 Hz somatomotor source strengths when eyes were open. When DBS was off UPDRS action tremor scores correlated with pericentral 6-10 Hz and 21-30 Hz and occipital alpha source strengths when eyes open. Occipital alpha strength decreased during DBS when eyes closed. The peak frequency of occipital alpha rhythm correlated negatively with total UPDRS motor scores and with rigidity subscores, when eyes closed. CONCLUSION STN DBS modulates brain oscillations both in alpha and beta bands and these oscillations reflect the clinical condition during DBS. SIGNIFICANCE MEG combined with an appropriate artifact rejection method enables studies of DBS effects in Parkinsons disease and presumably also in the other emerging DBS indications.

The mirror illusion induces high gamma oscillations in the absence of movement

We tested whether mirror visual feedback (MVF) from a moving hand induced high gamma oscillation (HGO) response in the hemisphere contralateral to the mirror and ipsilateral to the self-paced movement. MEG was recorded in 14 subjects under three conditions: bilateral synchronous movements of both index fingers (BILATERAL), movements of the right hand index finger while observing the immobile left index finger (NOMIRROR), and movements of the right hand index finger while observing its mirror reflection (MIRROR). The right hemispheric spatiospectral regions of interests (ROIs) in the sensor space, sensitive to bilateral movements, were found by statistical comparison of the BILATERAL spectral responses to baseline. For these ROIs, the post-movement HGO responses were compared between the MIRROR and NOMIRROR conditions. We found that MVF from the moving hand, similarly to the real movements of the opposite hand, induced HGOs (55-85Hz) in the sensorimotor cortex. This MVF effect was frequency-specific and did not spread to oscillations in other frequency bands. This is the first study demonstrating movement-related HGO induced by MVF from the moving hand in the absence of proprioceptive feedback signaling. Our findings support the hypothesis that MVF can trigger the feedback-based control processes specifically associated with perception of ones own movements.

Virtual MEG Helmet: Computer Simulation of an Approach to Neuromagnetic Field Sampling

Head movements during an MEG recording are commonly considered an obstacle. In this computer simulation study, we introduce an approach, the virtual MEG helmet (VMH), which employs the head movements for data quality improvement. With a VMH, a denser MEG helmet is constructed by adding new sensors corresponding to different head positions. Based on the Shannons theory of communication, we calculated the total information as a figure of merit for comparing the actual 306-sensor Elekta Neuromag helmet to several types of the VMH. As source models, we used simulated randomly distributed source current (RDSC), simulated auditory and somatosensory evoked fields. Using the RDSC model with the simulation of 360 recorded events, the total information (bits/sample) was 989 for the most informative single head position and up to 1272 for the VMH (addition of 28.6%). Using simulated AEFs, the additional contribution of a VMH was 12.6% and using simulated SEF only 1.1%. For the distributed and bilateral sources, a VMH can provide a more informative sampling of the neuromagnetic field during the same recording time than measuring the MEG from one head position. VMH can, in some situations, improve source localization of the neuromagnetic fields related to the normal and pathological brain activity. This should be investigated further employing real MEG recordings.

Simultaneous Processing of Noun Cue and to-be-Produced Verb in Verb Generation Task: Electromagnetic Evidence

A long-standing but implicit assumption is that words strongly associated with a presented cue are automatically activated in the memory through rapid spread of activation within brain semantic networks. The current study was aimed to provide direct evidence of such rapid access to words’ semantic representations and to investigate its neural sources using magnetoencephalography (MEG) and distributed source localization technique. Thirty-three neurotypical subjects underwent the MEG recording during verb generation task, which was to produce verbs related to the presented noun cues. Brain responses evoked by the noun cues were examined while manipulating the strength of association between the noun and the potential verb responses. The strong vs. weak noun-verb association led to a greater noun-related neural response at 250–400 ms after cue onset, and faster verb production. The cortical sources of the differential response were localized in left temporal pole, previously implicated in semantic access, and left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC), thought to subserve controlled semantic retrieval. The strength of the left VLPFC’s response to the nouns with strong verb associates was positively correlated to the speed of verbs production. Our findings empirically validate the theoretical expectation that in case of a strongly connected noun-verb pair, successful access to target verb representation may occur already at the stage of lexico-semantic analysis of the presented noun. Moreover, the MEG results suggest that contrary to the previous conclusion derived from fMRI studies left VLPFC supports selection of the target verb representations, even if they were retrieved from semantic memory rapidly and effortlessly. The discordance between MEG and fMRI findings in verb generation task may stem from different modes of neural activation captured by phase-locked activity in MEG and slow changes of blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) signal in fMRI.