1. Neuroscience

Modality-specific tracking of attention and sensory statistics in the human electrophysiological spectral exponent

  1. Leonhard Waschke  Is a corresponding author
  2. Thomas Donoghue
  3. Lorenz Fiedler
  4. Sydney Smith
  5. Douglas D Garrett
  6. Bradley Voytek
  7. Jonas Obleser
  1. MPI for Human Development, Germany
  2. University of California, San Diego, United States
  3. Eriksholm Research Centre, Oticon A/S, Denmark
  4. Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Germany
  5. University of Lübeck, Germany
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.70068
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  1. Leonhard Waschke
  2. Thomas Donoghue
  3. Lorenz Fiedler
  4. Sydney Smith
  5. Douglas D Garrett
  6. Bradley Voytek
  7. Jonas Obleser
(2021)
Modality-specific tracking of attention and sensory statistics in the human electrophysiological spectral exponent
eLife 10:e70068.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.70068
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Abstract

A hallmark of electrophysiological brain activity is its 1/f-like spectrum - power decreases with increasing frequency. The steepness of this 'roll-off' is approximated by the spectral exponent, which in invasively recorded neural populations reflects the balance of excitatory to inhibitory neural activity (E:I balance). Here, we first establish that the spectral exponent of non-invasive electroencephalography (EEG) recordings is highly sensitive to general (i.e., anaesthesia-driven) changes in E:I balance. Building on the EEG spectral exponent as a viable marker of E:I, we then demonstrate its sensitivity to the focus of selective attention in an EEG experiment during which participants detected targets in simultaneous audio-visual noise. In addition to these endogenous changes in E:I balance, EEG spectral exponents over auditory and visual sensory cortices also tracked auditory and visual stimulus spectral exponents, respectively. Individuals' degree of this selective stimulus-brain coupling in spectral exponents predicted behavioural performance. Our results highlight the rich information contained in 1/f-like neural activity, providing a window into diverse neural processes previously thought to be inaccessible in non-invasive human recordings.

Data availability

Data and code have been deposited on OSF (https://osf.io/wyzrg/).

The following data sets were generated
The following previously published data sets were used

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Leonhard Waschke

    MPI for Human Development, Berlin, Germany
    For correspondence
    waschke@mpib-berlin.mpg.de
    Competing interests
    No competing interests declared.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-1248-9259

  2. Thomas Donoghue

    University of California, San Diego, San Diego, United States
    Competing interests
    No competing interests declared.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-5911-0472

  3. Lorenz Fiedler

    Eriksholm Research Centre, Oticon A/S, Snekkersten,, Denmark
    Competing interests
    No competing interests declared.

  4. Sydney Smith

    University of California, San Diego, San Diego, United States
    Competing interests
    No competing interests declared.

  5. Douglas D Garrett

    Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany
    Competing interests
    No competing interests declared.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-0629-7672

  6. Bradley Voytek

    Cognitive Science, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, United States
    Competing interests
    No competing interests declared.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-1640-2525

  7. Jonas Obleser

    Department of Psychology, University of Lübeck, Lübeck, Germany
    Competing interests
    Jonas Obleser, Reviewing Editor for eLife.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-7619-0459

Funding

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Emmy Noether Programme)

  • Leonhard Waschke
  • Douglas D Garrett

H2020 European Research Council (ERC-CoG-2014-646696)

  • Jonas Obleser

Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research

  • Leonhard Waschke
  • Douglas D Garrett

Whitehall Foundation (2017-12-73)

  • Bradley Voytek

National Science Foundation (BCS-1736028)

  • Bradley Voytek

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

Reviewing Editor

  1. Maria Chait, University College London, United Kingdom

Ethics

Human subjects: All participants gave written informed consent, reported normalhearing and had normal or corrected to normal vision. All experimental procedures wereapproved by the institutional review board of the University of California, San Diego, Human Research Protections Program (UCSD IRB Protocol #150834. ).

Version history

  1. Preprint posted: January 14, 2021 (view preprint)
  2. Received: May 5, 2021
  3. Accepted: October 18, 2021
  4. Accepted Manuscript published: October 21, 2021 (version 1)
  5. Version of Record published: November 11, 2021 (version 2)

Copyright

© 2021, Waschke 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. Leonhard Waschke
  2. Thomas Donoghue
  3. Lorenz Fiedler
  4. Sydney Smith
  5. Douglas D Garrett
  6. Bradley Voytek
  7. Jonas Obleser
(2021)
Modality-specific tracking of attention and sensory statistics in the human electrophysiological spectral exponent
eLife 10:e70068.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.70068

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.70068

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