02268nas a2200337   4500008004100000022001400041245011100055210006900166260001200235300001100247490000800258520124200266653002501508653001001533653000901543653001701552653002001569653001801589653002601607653002501633653001101658653001101669653000901680653001601689100002301705700003201728700001901760700001901779700001901798856011301817       2021                        eng d  a1095-957200aModulation in cortical excitability disrupts information transfer in perceptual-level stimulus processing.0 aModulation in cortical excitability disrupts information transfe  c11/2021  a1184980 v2433 a<p>Despite significant interest in the neural underpinnings of behavioral variability, little light has been shed on the cortical mechanism underlying the failure to respond to perceptual-level stimuli. We hypothesized that cortical activity resulting from perceptual-level stimuli is sensitive to the moment-to-moment fluctuations in cortical excitability, and thus may not suffice to produce a behavioral response. We tested this hypothesis using electrocorticographic recordings to follow the propagation of cortical activity in six human subjects that responded to perceptual-level auditory stimuli. Here we show that for presentations that did not result in a behavioral response, the likelihood of cortical activity decreased from auditory cortex to motor cortex, and was related to reduced local cortical excitability. Cortical excitability was quantified using instantaneous voltage during a short window prior to cortical activity onset. Therefore, when humans are presented with an auditory stimulus close to perceptual-level threshold, moment-by-moment fluctuations in cortical excitability determine whether cortical responses to sensory stimulation successfully connect auditory input to a resultant behavioral response.</p>10aAcoustic Stimulation10aAdult10aAged10aAlpha Rhythm10aAuditory Cortex10aBrain Mapping10aCortical Excitability10aElectrocorticography10aFemale10aHumans10aMale10aMiddle Aged1 aMoheimanian, Ladan1 aParaskevopoulou, Sivylla, E1 aAdamek, Markus1 aSchalk, Gerwin1 aBrunner, Peter  uhttps://neurotechcenter.org/publications/2021/modulation-cortical-excitability-disrupts-information-transfer02749nas a2200373   4500008004100000022001400041245011800055210006900173260001200242300001100254490000800265520163200273653001001905653001501915653001701930653002001947653001501967653002501982653001102007653001702018653001102035653000902046653001602055653001402071653002802085653001802113653001602131100003202147700002102179700001902200700001902219700001902238856011802257       2021                        eng d  a1095-957200aWithin-subject reaction time variability: Role of cortical networks and underlying neurophysiological mechanisms.0 aWithinsubject reaction time variability Role of cortical network  c08/2021  a1181270 v2373 a<p>Variations in reaction time are a ubiquitous characteristic of human behavior. Extensively documented, they have been successfully modeled using parameters of the subject or the task, but the neural basis of behavioral reaction time that varies within the same subject and the same task has been minimally studied. In this paper, we investigate behavioral reaction time variance using 28 datasets of direct cortical recordings in humans who engaged in four different types of simple sensory-motor reaction time tasks. Using a previously described technique that can identify the onset of population-level cortical activity and a novel functional connectivity algorithm described herein, we show that the cumulative latency difference of population-level neural activity across the task-related cortical network can explain up to 41% of the trial-by-trial variance in reaction time. Furthermore, we show that reaction time variance may primarily be due to the latencies in specific brain regions and demonstrate that behavioral latency variance is accumulated across the whole task-related cortical network. Our results suggest that population-level neural activity monotonically increases prior to movement execution, and that trial-by-trial changes in that increase are, in part, accounted for by inhibitory activity indexed by low-frequency oscillations. This pre-movement neural activity explains 19% of the measured variance in neural latencies in our data. Thus, our study provides a mechanistic explanation for a sizable fraction of behavioral reaction time when the subject's task is the same from trial to trial.</p>10aAdult10aAlgorithms10aAlpha Rhythm10aCerebral Cortex10aConnectome10aElectrocorticography10aFemale10aGamma Rhythm10aHumans10aMale10aMiddle Aged10aNerve Net10aPsychomotor Performance10aReaction Time10aYoung Adult1 aParaskevopoulou, Sivylla, E1 aCoon, William, G1 aBrunner, Peter1 aMiller, Kai, J1 aSchalk, Gerwin  uhttps://neurotechcenter.org/publications/2021/within-subject-reaction-time-variability-role-cortical-networks-and