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Magnifying Traveling Waves on the Scalp

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Abstract

Traveling waves appear in various signals that measure neuronal activity. Some signals measured in animals have singles-cell resolution and directly point to neuronal activity. In those cases, activation of distributed neurons forms a wave front, and the front propagates across the cortical surface. Other signals are variants of neuroelectric potentials, i.e. electroencephalography, electrocorticography and field potentials. Instead of having fine spatial resolution, these signals reflect the activity of neuronal populations via volume conduction (VC). Sources of traveling waves in neuroelectric potentials have not been well addressed so far. As animal studies show propagating activation of neurons that spread in measured areas, it is often considered that neuronal activations during scalp waves have similar trajectories of activation, spreading like scalp waves. However, traveling waves on the scalp differ from those found directly on the cortical surface in several dimensions: traveling velocity, traveling distance and areal size occupied by single polarity. We describe that the simplest sources can produce scalp waves with perceived spatial dimensions which are actually a magnification of neuronal activity emanating from local sources due to VC. This viewpoint is not a rigorous proof of our magnification concept. However, we suggest the possibility that the actual dimensions of neuronal activity producing traveling waves is not as large as the dimension of the traveling waves.

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Funding

This study was supported by NIH Grants F32DC015391 and R01DC015780.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Translational Neuroscience Division, Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research, Orangeburg, NY, USA

    John J. Orczyk & Yoshinao Kajikawa

  2. Department of Psychiatry, New York University School of Medicine, New York, NY, USA

    Yoshinao Kajikawa

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  1. John J. Orczyk
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  2. Yoshinao Kajikawa
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Correspondence to Yoshinao Kajikawa.

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This is one of several papers published together in Brain Topography on the “Special Issue: Computational Modeling and M/EEG”.

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Orczyk, J.J., Kajikawa, Y. Magnifying Traveling Waves on the Scalp. Brain Topogr 35, 162–168 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10548-021-00853-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10548-021-00853-1

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