1. Neuroscience

The frequency gradient of human resting-state brain oscillations follows cortical hierarchies

  1. Keyvan Mahjoory  Is a corresponding author
  2. Jan-Mathijs Schoffelen
  3. Anne Keitel
  4. Joachim Gross  Is a corresponding author
  1. University of Muenster, Germany
  2. Radboud University Nijmegen, Netherlands
  3. University of Dundee, United Kingdom
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.53715
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  1. Keyvan Mahjoory
  2. Jan-Mathijs Schoffelen
  3. Anne Keitel
  4. Joachim Gross
(2020)
The frequency gradient of human resting-state brain oscillations follows cortical hierarchies
eLife 9:e53715.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.53715
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Abstract

The human cortex is characterized by local morphological features such as cortical thickness, myelin content, and gene expression that change along the posterior-anterior axis. We investigated if some of these structural gradients are associated with a similar gradient in a prominent feature of brain activity - namely the frequency of oscillations. In resting-state MEG recordings from healthy participants (N=187) using mixed effect models, we found that the dominant peak frequency in a brain area decreases significantly along the posterior-anterior axis following the global hierarchy from early sensory to higher-order areas. This spatial gradient of peak frequency was significantly anticorrelated with that of cortical thickness, representing a proxy of the cortical hierarchical level. This result indicates that the dominant frequency changes systematically and globally along the spatial and hierarchical gradients and establishes a new structure-function relationship pertaining to brain oscillations as a core organization that may underlie hierarchical specialization in the brain

Data availability

We have used online dataset for this study.

The following previously published data sets were used

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Keyvan Mahjoory

    Institute for Biomagnetism and Biosignalanalysis, University of Muenster, Muenster, Germany
    For correspondence
    kmahjoory@gmail.com
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-0386-1135

  2. Jan-Mathijs Schoffelen

    Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, Netherlands
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

  3. Anne Keitel

    Psychology, University of Dundee, Dundee, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-4498-0146

  4. Joachim Gross

    Institute for Biomagnetism and Biosignalanalysis, University of Muenster, Muenster, Germany
    For correspondence
    joachim.gross@uni-muenster.de
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

Funding

University of Muenster

  • Keyvan Mahjoory

Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (864.14.011)

  • Jan-Mathijs Schoffelen

IZKF (Gro3/001/19)

  • Joachim Gross

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (GR 2024/5-1)

  • Joachim Gross

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Reviewing Editor

  1. Laura Dugué, Uni­ver­sité de Paris, France

Version history

  1. Received: November 18, 2019
  2. Accepted: August 20, 2020
  3. Accepted Manuscript published: August 21, 2020 (version 1)
  4. Version of Record published: September 7, 2020 (version 2)

Copyright

© 2020, Mahjoory et al.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.

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  1. Keyvan Mahjoory
  2. Jan-Mathijs Schoffelen
  3. Anne Keitel
  4. Joachim Gross
(2020)
The frequency gradient of human resting-state brain oscillations follows cortical hierarchies
eLife 9:e53715.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.53715

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.53715

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