Alpha oscillations in the auditory cortex are key to attention and the suppression of irrelevant information. Using intra-cerebral recordings, López-Madrona et al. identified two distinct neural sources during rest and auditory stimulation: “oscillatory” sources, defined by strong alpha oscillations at rest, and “evoked” sources, characterised by significant responses to stimuli. Two alpha mechanisms were identified (left panel) a sustained suppression of oscillatory sources, reflecting a general disinhibition of the network to facilitate sensory information processing; and (right panel) a bottom-up induced response of evoked sources to process the stimulus.
Víctor J. López-Madrona, Agnès Trébuchon, Christian G. Bénar, Daniele Schön, et Benjamin Morillon
Different Sustained and Induced Alpha Oscillations Emerge in the Human Auditory Cortex during Sound Processing
Communications Biology 7 (1): 1570. – @HAL