Poster No:
2497
Submission Type:
Abstract Submission
Authors:
Juanli Zhang1, Paul Steinfath1, Carina Forster1, Christian Sander2, Tilman Hensch2, Ulrich Hegerl3, Georg Schomerus2, Veronica Witte1, Arno Villringer1, Vadim Nikulin1
Institutions:
1Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Saxony, 2University of Leipzig Medical Center, Leipzig, Saxony, 3Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, Hesse
First Author:
Juanli Zhang
Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences
Leipzig, Saxony
Co-Author(s):
Paul Steinfath
Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences
Leipzig, Saxony
Carina Forster
Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences
Leipzig, Saxony
Tilman Hensch
University of Leipzig Medical Center
Leipzig, Saxony
Veronica Witte
Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences
Leipzig, Saxony
Arno Villringer
Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences
Leipzig, Saxony
Vadim Nikulin
Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences
Leipzig, Saxony
Introduction:
Large-scale ongoing brain activity, with oscillations being primarily generated in alpha and beta frequencies, has been consistently shown to shape the neural responses to external stimuli and thus affecting perceptual performance. While a large body of studies focused on the amplitude of prestimulus activity, a few studies further showed that temporal dynamics, particularly reflected in transient beta events, could mask the perception of somatosensory stimuli (Shin et al., 2017; Karvat et al., 2021). However, the influence of transient beta events on interoception remains unexplored. In our study we investigated how spontaneous beta activity shapes interoception, particularly cardiac interoception. To this end, heartbeat evoked potential (HEP), an electrophysiological marker for processing cardiac information, was used to index cardiac interoception.
Methods:
First, we attempted to replicate the previous findings relating prestimulus beta activity to the perception of somatosensory stimuli based on an independent dataset (N=40). Next, we analyzed a dataset based on a large-cohort study of the Leipzig Research Centre for Civilization Diseases (LIFE, N=~3000 participants). The participants underwent 20 minutes resting state EEG recording. By applying strict exclusion criteria for the elderly participants, the final sample includes 1466 healthy elderly subjects (age of 75.66±2.8 years, 680 females).
Results:
We showed, in line with the previous studies, that 1) stronger beta activity, in the form of higher mean power (cluster-based permutation test in channel-time domain, p=9.995e-04) with the most pronounced effect at centro-parietal region, 2) longer burst duration (p=0.002) over the fronto-central area and 3) bursts occurring closer to the stimulus onset (p=0.032) over the right central region, were observed in undetected (Miss) compared to detected (Hit) trials. These results thus further confirmed a robust influence of spontaneous transient beta events on the exteroception in somatosensory domain. Additionally, we obtained HEP from LIFE dataset, and found that prestimulus (here "stimulus" is referred to the R peak in each cardiac cycle) beta activity positively shapes the brain's response to heartbeat. More specifically, 1) stronger beta power (p=0.002) over bilateral centro-parietal region, 2) longer burst duration (p=0.002) over bilateral central area or 3) closer beta events (p=0.002) over frontal and parietal regions during the prestimulus time window corresponds to a larger amplitude of HEP. Crucially, we demonstrated that these effects are significantly locked to the R peaks, and are not attributed to the volume conducted cardiac field artifacts, leakage from the possibly sustained effect from the previous heartbeat, or due to the splitting procedure. Lastly, the prestimulus alpha power was also examined for both somatosensory perception task and cardiac interoception: stronger alpha power corresponds to weaker perception and lower HEP.
Conclusions:
In sum, in addition to providing further support for the finding that beta bursting activity masks the perception of external stimuli, our study suggests its opposite influence on the cardiac interoception. A general suppressing role of spontaneous alpha activity on both exteroception and interocpetion might be consistent with the hypothesis that stronger alpha activity is related to a lower level of excitability. Moreover, divergent roles of spontaneous beta activity on sensory perception may well fit into a proposal that beta activity may be associated with the expectation of the external stimuli, together with the account that processing the internal and external stimuli information might be through distinct time windows (and probably related "brain states") which could be optimal for one and in turn not for the other. Future research should focus on paradigms where external and internal stimuli are jointly presented and the reciprocal effect of transient beta activity could be investigated.
Novel Imaging Acquisition Methods:
EEG 2
MEG
Perception, Attention and Motor Behavior:
Perception: Multisensory and Crossmodal 1
Perception and Attention Other
Physiology, Metabolism and Neurotransmission :
Neurophysiology of Imaging Signals
Keywords:
Electroencephaolography (EEG)
ELECTROPHYSIOLOGY
Perception
Somatosensory
1|2Indicates the priority used for review
Provide references using author date format
Karvat, G. (2021), 'Spontaneous activity competes with externally evoked responses in sensory cortex', Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., USA 118
Shin, H. (2017), 'The rate of transient beta frequency events predicts behavior across tasks and species', eLife, 6:e29086