The Art of Encephalography to Understand and Discriminate Higher Cognitive Functions Visualizing Big Data on Brain Imaging Using Brain Dynamics Movies

In recent decades a significant effort has been directed towards experimental and theoretical approaches aiming at the establishment of neural correlates of higher cognitive functions and awareness. These efforts produce massive amounts of data on imaging brain structure and functions, and efficient methods are in high demand to make these data easily accessible and understandable to human experts. Here we describe the development of qualitative tools and methodologies where large quantities of brain imaging data are processed and displayed for the purpose of visually discriminating the various stages of the cognitive processes. In this work we report and describe in detail a methodology inspired by the art of encephalography, whereby brain dynamics movies are created based on experimental data. The results are presented to identify large-scale synchronizations and de- synchronizations across broad frequency bands as a potential manifestation of the cycle of creation of knowledge and meaning. This visual process is also useful for the description of learning and adaptation processes in brains.