A Blueprint for the Study of the Brain's Spatiotemporal Patterns
Emmanuelle Tognoli, Daniela Benites, J. A. Scott Kelso
The functioning of an organ such as the brain emerges from interactions
between its constituent parts. Further, this interaction is not immutable in
time but rather unfolds in a succession of patterns, thereby allowing the brain
to adapt to constantly changing exterior and interior milieus. This calls for a
framework able to study patterned spatiotemporal interactions between
components of the brain. A theoretical and methodological framework is
developed to study the brain's coordination dynamics. Here we present a toolset
designed to decipher the continuous dynamics of electrophysiological data and
its relation to (dys-) function. Understanding the spatiotemporal organization
of brain patterns and their association with behavioral, cognitive and
clinically-relevant variables is an important challenge for the fields of
neuroscience and biologically-inspired engineering. It is hoped that such a
comprehensive framework will shed light not only on human behavior and the
human mind but also help in understanding the growing number of pathologies
that are linked to disorders of brain connectivity.