[Brainmap] Wei Tang, PhD; Title: Coexistence of functional integration and segregation in the cingulate cortex: an MEG study

Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - 12:00
Seminar room 2204 149 13th St., Charlestown Navy Yard

Next Wednesday, 12/17 at 12:00 noon

Wei Tang, Ph.D. 

Research Fellow in Radiology, Harvard Medical School

Research Fellow, Massachusetts General Hospital

Title:Coexistence of functional integration and segregation in the cingulate cortex: an MEG study

Little is known about the neural mechanisms of the resting-state functional connectivity between brain regions. An important question is how a region maintains its own activity while effectively communicating with others. In this talk, I will discuss findings from an ongoing MEG study on the spontaneous coupling between the Anterior and Posterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC and PCC). Using Granger causality to assess band-specific influences between the two regions, we found that they selectively couple to each other in the alpha range, while non-selectively couple to the rest of the cortex in higher frequencies. Furthermore, there is a phase-amplitude relationship in the local activity between the 3–4 Hz and the gamma components, which particularly presents in ACC but not in PCC, making a distinction between their spontaneous dynamics. The findings suggest that functional integration and segregation may be kept parallel through separate neural oscillations. The coupled regions can be dependent but dissimilar, preserving the ability to perform differentially outside the resting state.