Published Paper: Current Biology

We are pleased to announce the publication of a recent paper by Dr. Christiane Weinrich, investigating the effects of beta frequency tACS on resting connectivity within motor cortices.

Christiane was a visiting clinical fellow within our group, co-mentored by Prof. Peter Brown.  She was primarily interested in the role of oscillatory activity in underpinning functional connectivity in the brain, and how pathological changes in these affect functioning in Parkinson’s Disease. 

This paper: "Modulation of Long-Range Connectivity Patterns via Frequency-Specific Stimulation of Human Cortex" is published in the journal Current Biology, and is available online here.  Congratulations to Christiane, and her fellow co-authors: John-Stuart Brittain, Magdalena Nowak, Reza Salimi-Khorshidi, Peter Brown and Charlie Stagg.

SUMMARY OF THE PAPER

In this paper, the authors show that entraining the phase of oscillations in one brain region modulates the connectivity pattern of that region without altering the strength of its connectivity with any specific region. These data provide evidence for how disordered functional communication arises in conditions characterised by perturbation of oscillations.

Highlights

• tACS does not alter overall functional connectivity between major network nodes
• However, tACS modulates the connectivity pattern of the stimulated motor cortex
• These data directly support the “communication through coherence” hypothesis
• We provide evidence for how disordered connectivity arises from oscillatory changes