Vortices in brain waves

TL;DR

This paper models brain wave vortices as phase and amplitude patterns arising from neural interactions, linking mesoscopic order parameters to EEG phenomena like gamma oscillations, theta beats, and phase cones.

Contribution

It introduces a dissipative many-body model to describe null spikes and phase cones as vortices in brain wave activity, providing a novel theoretical framework.

Findings

Null spikes correspond to vortices in brain wave phase patterns.

Phase cones are modeled as vortices in the dissipative many-body system.

The model links neural interactions to observable EEG phenomena.

Abstract

Interactions by mutual excitation in neural populations in human and animal brains create a mesoscopic order parameter that is recorded in brain waves (electroencephalogram, EEG). Spatially and spectrally distributed oscillations are imposed on the background activity by inhibitory feedback in the gamma range (30-80 Hz). Beats recur at theta rates (3-7 Hz), at which the order parameter transiently approaches zero and microscopic activity becomes disordered. After these null spikes, the order parameter resurges and initiates a frame bearing a mesoscopic spatial pattern of gamma amplitude modulation that governs the microscopic activity, and that is correlated with behavior. The brain waves also reveal a spatial pattern of phase modulation in the form of a cone. Using the formalism of the dissipative many-body model of brain, we describe the null spikes and the accompanying phase cones as vortices.