Data-Driven EEG Theta and Alpha Components Are Associated with Subjective Experience during Resting State

Abstract

The resting-state paradigm is frequently applied to study spontaneous activity of the brain in normal and clinical conditions. However, the relationship between the ongoing experience of mind wandering and the individual biological signal is still unclear. We aim to estimate associations between subjective experiences measured with the Amsterdam Resting-State Questionnaire and data-driven components of an electroencephalogram extracted by frequency principal component analysis (f-PCA). Five minutes of resting multichannel EEG was recorded in 226 participants and six EEG data-driven components were extracted—three components in the alpha range (peaking at 9, 10.5, and 11.5 Hz) and one each in the delta (peaking at 0.5 Hz), theta (peaking at 5.5 Hz) and beta (peaking at 17 Hz) ranges. Bayesian Pearson’s correlation revealed a positive association between the individual loadings of the theta component and ratings for Sleepiness (r = 0.200, BF10 = 7.676), while the individual loadings on one of the alpha components correlated positively with scores for Comfort (r = 0.198, BF10 = 7.115). Our study indicates the relevance of assessments of spontaneous thought occurring during the resting-state for the understanding of the individual intrinsic electrical brain activity.

Hysteresis and bistability in synaptic transmission modeled as a chain of biochemical reactions with a positive feedback

“…In this study, we investigated the behavior of the proposed LTP model with physiologically relevant interstimulus intervals. The background activity in a brain corresponds to range of frequency, rather than on the specific frequencies: the main power spectra components of electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings at rest are at frequencies < 20 Hz [28]. Single cell in vivo recordings from experimental animals revealed that spontaneous firing of neurons is highly irregular, and the average frequency depends on a cell type: 0.14 Hz in hippocampal CA1 and CA3 pyramidal cells of mice [19]), 1 Hz in L5 visual cortical pyramidal neurons of rats [18], and 4 Hz in pyramidal cells of rat prefrontal cortex [4].…”