Attentional Information Routing in The Human Brain

bioRxiv [Preprint]. 2024 Sep 15:2024.09.11.612548. doi: 10.1101/2024.09.11.612548.

Abstract

Brain-wide communication supports behaviors that require coordination between sensory and associative regions. However, how large-scale brain networks route sensory information at fast timescales to guide upcoming actions remains unclear. Using spiking neural networks and human intracranial electrophysiology during spatial attention tasks, where participants detected a target at cued locations, we show that high-frequency activity bursts (HFAb) serve as information-carrying events, facilitating fast and long-range communications. HFAbs emerged as bouts of neural population spiking and were coordinated brain-wide through low-frequency rhythms. At the network-level, HFAb coordination identified distinct cue- and target-activated subnetworks. HFAbs following the cue onset in cue-subnetworks predicted successful target detection and preceded the information in target-subnetworks following target onset. Our findings suggest HFAbs as a neural mechanism for fast brain-wide information routing that supports attentional performance.

Publication types

  • Preprint