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Synchronization/Desynchronization of Cortical Electrical Activity in the Theta and Alpha Ranges Evoked by Facial Images during Increased Loading on Working Memory

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A cognitive set model to emotional facial expressions was used in healthy adult humans to study evoked synchronization/desynchronization reactions of cortical theta and alpha activity to images of faces during increased loading on working memory (with an additional task consisting of recognizing verbal stimuli). A correlation was seen between behavioral (increased set inertia) and electrophysiological (decreased evoked theta-rhythm synchronization) experimental data. We propose the hypothesis that increases in tonic prestimulus activity of theta potentials during the prestimulus period and suppression of phasic corticohippocampal system activation reactions are among the neural mechanisms decreasing the plasticity of the cognitive function of recognizing emotional facial expressions in humans in conditions of increased loading on working memory. The question of the reciprocal relationships between the two functional systems integrating brain activity – the corticohippocampal and the frontothalamic – in the process of recognizing emotional facial expressions is discussed.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Higher Nervous Activity and Neurophysiology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia

    E. A. Kostandov & E. A. Cheremushkin

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  1. E. A. Kostandov
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  2. E. A. Cheremushkin
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Correspondence to E. A. Kostandov.

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Translated from Zhurnal Vysshei Nervnoi Deyatel’nosti imeni I. P. Pavlova, Vol. 61, No. 1, pp. 35–46, January–February, 2011.

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Kostandov, E.A., Cheremushkin, E.A. Synchronization/Desynchronization of Cortical Electrical Activity in the Theta and Alpha Ranges Evoked by Facial Images during Increased Loading on Working Memory. Neurosci Behav Physi 42, 495–504 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11055-012-9591-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11055-012-9591-1

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