Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
6262600 | Brain Research | 2016 | 10 Pages |
â¢Visual entrainment is considered mostly to modulate cortical power locally.â¢Instead, we hypothesized large-scale effects in the brain functional network.â¢Graph theoretical analysis combined with MEG source localization.â¢Visual entrainment indeed yielded network-level effects.
Visual rhythmic stimulation evokes a robust power increase exactly at the stimulation frequency, the so-called steady-state response (SSR). Localization of visual SSRs normally shows a very focal modulation of power in visual cortex and led to the treatment and interpretation of SSRs as a local phenomenon. Given the brain network dynamics, we hypothesized that SSRs have additional large-scale effects on the brain functional network that can be revealed by means of graph theory. We used rhythmic visual stimulation at a range of frequencies (4-30Â Hz), recorded MEG and investigated source level connectivity across the whole brain. Using graph theoretical measures we observed a frequency-unspecific reduction of global density in the alpha band “disconnecting” visual cortex from the rest of the network. Also, a frequency-specific increase of connectivity between occipital cortex and precuneus was found at the stimulation frequency that exhibited the highest resonance (30Â Hz). In conclusion, we showed that SSRs dynamically re-organized the brain functional network. These large-scale effects should be taken into account not only when attempting to explain the nature of SSRs, but also when used in various experimental designs.