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Large-scale cortical correlation structure of spontaneous oscillatory activity

Nature Neuroscience volume 15, pages 884–890 (2012)Cite this article

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Abstract

Little is known about the brain-wide correlation of electrophysiological signals. We found that spontaneous oscillatory neuronal activity exhibited frequency-specific spatial correlation structure in the human brain. We developed an analysis approach that discounts spurious correlation of signal power caused by the limited spatial resolution of electrophysiological measures. We applied this approach to source estimates of spontaneous neuronal activity reconstructed from magnetoencephalography. Overall, correlation of power across cortical regions was strongest in the alpha to beta frequency range (8–32 Hz) and correlation patterns depended on the underlying oscillation frequency. Global hubs resided in the medial temporal lobe in the theta frequency range (4–6 Hz), in lateral parietal areas in the alpha to beta frequency range (8–23 Hz) and in sensorimotor areas for higher frequencies (32–45 Hz). Our data suggest that interactions in various large-scale cortical networks may be reflected in frequency-specific power envelope correlations.

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Figure 1: Power envelope correlation.
Figure 2: Power envelope correlations between orthogonalized spontaneous signals from homologous early sensory areas.
Figure 3: Correlation maps for selected locations at a carrier frequency of 16 Hz.
Figure 4: Graph-theoretical analysis of the global correlation structure of band-limited neuronal signals.
Figure 5: Correlation maps for identified hubs at a carrier frequency of 16 Hz.
Figure 6: Spatial patterning of betweenness as a function of the carrier frequency.

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Acknowledgements

We thank C. Hipp for helpful discussions and comments on the manuscript, and the bwGRiD project (http://www.bw-grid.de) for the computational resources. This work was supported by grants from the European Union (NEST-PATH-043457 to A.K.E. and HEALTH-F2-2008-200728 to M.C. and A.K.E.) and the National Institute of Mental Health (R01 MH096482-01 to M.C.).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Neurophysiology and Pathophysiology, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany

    Joerg F Hipp, David J Hawellek & Andreas K Engel

  2. Centre for Integrative Neuroscience, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany

    Joerg F Hipp & Markus Siegel

  3. Departments of Neurology, Radiology, Anatomy, and Neurobiology, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri.,

    Maurizio Corbetta

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  1. Joerg F Hipp
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Contributions

All of the authors designed the experiment and wrote the paper. J.F.H. and D.J.H. collected the data and performed the data analysis. J.F.H. conceived the orthogonalization approach.

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Correspondence to Joerg F Hipp.

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Competing interests

A patent on the method of power-envelope correlation between orthogonalized signals has been filed by the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf with Joerg F. Hipp as inventor.

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Hipp, J., Hawellek, D., Corbetta, M. et al. Large-scale cortical correlation structure of spontaneous oscillatory activity. Nat Neurosci 15, 884–890 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.3101

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