Neurophenomenology: An Introduction for Neurophilosophers

Classical theories of sensory processing view the brain as a passive, stimulus-driven device. By contrast, more recent approaches emphasize the constructive nature of perception, viewing it as an active and highly selective process. Indeed, there is ample evidence that the processing of stimuli is controlled by top-down influences that strongly shape the intrinsic dynamics of thalamocortical networks and constantly create predictions about forthcoming sensory events. We discuss recent experiments indicating that such predictions might be embodied in the temporal structure of both stimulus-evoked and ongoing activity, and that synchronous oscillations are particularly important in this process. Coherence among subthreshold membrane potential fluctuations could be exploited to express selective functional relationships during states of expectancy or attention, and these dynamic patterns could allow the grouping and selection of distributed neuronal responses for further processing.

This article presents, for the first time, a practical method for the direct quantification of frequency‐specific synchronization (i.e., transient phase‐locking) between two neuroelectric signals. The motivation for its development is to be able to examine the role of neural synchronies as a putative mechanism for long‐range neural integration during cognitive tasks. The method, called phase‐locking statistics (PLS), measures the significance of the phase covariance between two signals with a reasonable time‐resolution (<100 ms). Unlike the more traditional method of spectral coherence, PLS separates the phase and amplitude components and can be directly interpreted in the framework of neural integration. To validate synchrony values against background fluctuations, PLS uses surrogate data and thus makes no a priori assumptions on the nature of the experimental data. We also apply PLS to investigate intracortical recordings from an epileptic patient performing a visual discrimination task. We find large‐scale synchronies in the gamma band (45 Hz), e.g., between hippocampus and frontal gyrus, and local synchronies, within a limbic region, a few cm apart. We argue that whereas long‐scale effects do reflect cognitive processing, short‐scale synchronies are likely to be due to volume conduction. We discuss ways to separate such conduction effects from true signal synchrony. Hum Brain Mapping 8:194–208, 1999. © 1999 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.