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Dissertation
Travelling waves in the human brain
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Drexel University
May 2017
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17918/7stp-av78
Abstract
Brain oscillations are thought to be important for coordinating neural activities across different scales and regions. In my dissertation, I developed a novel analytical approach to test this hypothesis by probing spatial patterns of brain oscillations and comparing if they behave as traveling waves. I applied this method to human intracranial brain recordings collected from 97 surgical implanted patients. The results showed that, in both hippocampus and neocortex, low frequency oscillations are spatially clustered and form travelling waves. Traveling brain waves propagate through particular anatomical axes in different parts of the brain: in a posterior-to-anterior direction in both the hippocampus and the neocortex. By examining the relation between waves' oscillatory frequency and propagation speed, my analyses help explain the mechanism underlying traveling waves, by showing that this phenomenon can be modeled as weakly coupled oscillators. Travelling waves also exhibited behavior modulations, as the directional precision of waves in the frontal lobe correlated with cognitive efficiency in a working memory task. By showing the prevalence, mechanism, and behavioral role of travelling waves, my study presents a new window for understanding the organization and function of brain oscillations, which is to propagate behavioral information through large anatomical space.
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Details
- Title
- Travelling waves in the human brain
- Creators
- Honghui Zhang - DU
- Contributors
- Joshua Jacobs (Advisor) - Drexel University (1970-)
- Awarding Institution
- Drexel University
- Degree Awarded
- Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)
- Publisher
- Drexel University; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- Number of pages
- viii, 87 pages
- Resource Type
- Dissertation
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- School of Biomedical Engineering, Science, and Health Systems (1997-2026); Drexel University
- Other Identifier
- 7794; 991014632304604721