Predicting brain evoked response to external stimuli from temporal correlations of spontaneous activity

TL;DR

This study links spontaneous brain activity to evoked responses using a theoretical model and MEG data, showing that spontaneous correlations can predict how the brain reacts to external stimuli.

Contribution

It introduces a theoretical framework connecting spontaneous and evoked brain activity and validates it with experimental MEG data, advancing understanding of brain response prediction.

Findings

Spontaneous activity autocorrelation decays double-exponentially with two characteristic times.

Evoked response exhibits a single exponential decay.

Spontaneous activity can predict brain responses to external stimuli.

Abstract

The relation between spontaneous and stimulated global brain activity is a fundamental problem in the understanding of brain functions. This question is investigated both theoretically and experimentally within the context of nonequilibrium fluctuation-dissipation relations. We consider the stochastic coarse-grained Wilson-Cowan model in the linear noise approximation and compare analytical results to experimental data from magnetoencephalography (MEG) of human brain. The short time behavior of the autocorrelation function for spontaneous activity is characterized by a double-exponential decay, with two characteristic times, differing by two orders of magnitude. Conversely, the response function exhibits a single exponential decay in agreement with experimental data for evoked activity under visual stimulation. Results suggest that the brain response to weak external stimuli can be predicted from the observation of spontaneous activity and pave the way to controlled experiments on the brain response under different external perturbations.