Title: On the role of alpha and gamma oscillations for routing and prioritizing information in the working brain

Speaker: Dr. Ole Jensen Professor, School of Psychology University of Birmingham

Time: October 10 2017 (Tue) 13:00-15:00

Venue: Room 1113, Kezhen Wang Building

<span font-size:16px;line-height:25.6px;background-color:#ffffff;"="">Networks in the brain must rely on powerful mechanism for routing, maintaining and prioritizing information processing. From a larger set of attention and memory studies we now have evidence for the notion that alpha oscillations (9 – 12 Hz) are inhibitory and serve to route information: ‘gating by inhibition’.  The alpha band activity is under top-down control by areas in the dorsal attention network. As such the alpha oscillations – previously believed to reflect a state of rest – serve an important role for shaping the functional architecture of the working brain. Gamma band activity (50 – 100 Hz) reflects feed-forward processing is coupled to the phase of the alpha oscillations. Importantly, new findings suggest that representations activate in a phase specific manner along the alpha cycle. Our empirical framework has been developed using MEG, DTI/MEG, TMS/MEG, fMRI/EEG and non-human primate data. 

Host PI: Dr. Huan Luo