The asynchronous state's relation to large-scale potentials in cortex

Dynamics of Neural Microstates in the VTA-Striatal-Prefrontal Loop during Novelty Exploration in the Rat

Neural activity at the large-scale population level has been suggested to be consistent with a sequence of brief, quasistable spatial patterns. These "microstates" and their temporal dynamics have been linked to myriad cognitive functions and brain diseases. Most of this research has been performed using EEG, leaving many questions, such as the existence, dynamics, and behavioral relevance of microstates at the level of local field potentials (LFPs), unaddressed. Here, we adapted the standard EEG microstate analysis to triple-area LFP recordings from 192 electrodes in rats to investigate the mesoscopic dynamics of neural microstates within and across brain regions during novelty exploration. We performed simultaneous recordings from the prefrontal cortex, striatum, and ventral tegmental area in male rats during awake behavior (object novelty and exploration). We found that the LFP data can be accounted for by multiple, recurring microstates that were stable for ∼60-100 ms. The simultaneous microstate activity across brain regions revealed rhythmic patterns of coactivations, which we interpret as a novel indicator of inter-regional, mesoscale synchronization. Furthermore, these rhythmic coactivation patterns across microstates were modulated by behavioral states such as movement and exploration of a novel object. These results support the existence of a functional mesoscopic organization across multiple brain areas and present a possible link of the origin of macroscopic EEG microstates to zero-lag neuronal synchronization within and between brain areas, which is of particular interest to the human research community.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT The coordination of neural activity across the entire brain has remained elusive. Here we combine large-scale neural recordings at fine spatial resolution with the analysis of microstates (i.e., short-lived, recurring spatial patterns of neural activity). We demonstrate that the local activity in different brain areas can be accounted for by only a few microstates per region. These microstates exhibited temporal dynamics that were correlated across regions in rhythmic patterns. We demonstrate that these microstates are linked to behavior and exhibit different properties in the frequency domain during different behavioral states. In summary, LFP microstates provide an insightful approach to studying both mesoscopic and large-scale brain activation within and across regions.

Large-Scale and Multiscale Networks in the Rodent Brain during Novelty Exploration

Neural activity is coordinated across multiple spatial and temporal scales, and these patterns of coordination are implicated in both healthy and impaired cognitive operations. However, empirical cross-scale investigations are relatively infrequent, because of limited data availability and to the difficulty of analyzing rich multivariate datasets. Here, we applied frequency-resolved multivariate source-separation analyses to characterize a large-scale dataset comprising spiking and local field potential (LFP) activity recorded simultaneously in three brain regions (prefrontal cortex, parietal cortex, hippocampus) in freely-moving mice. We identified a constellation of multidimensional, inter-regional networks across a range of frequencies (2-200 Hz). These networks were reproducible within animals across different recording sessions, but varied across different animals, suggesting individual variability in network architecture. The theta band (∼4-10 Hz) networks had several prominent features, including roughly equal contribution from all regions and strong inter-network synchronization. Overall, these findings demonstrate a multidimensional landscape of large-scale functional activations of cortical networks operating across multiple spatial, spectral, and temporal scales during open-field exploration.