Low frequency traveling waves in the human cortex coordinate neural activity across spatial scales

Abstract

Traveling waves of oscillatory activity are thought to influence neuronal spiking, providing a spatiotemporal frame-work for neural communication. However, no direct link has been established between traveling waves and neuronal spiking in humans. We examined traveling waves in the human lateral temporal lobe by using recordings from intracranial electrodes implanted in twenty participants for seizure monitoring as they performed a paired-associates verbal memory task. We observed ubiquitous low frequency traveling waves across the temporal lobe. While wave occurrence in a broad low frequency range did not differ between successful and unsuccessful memory conditions, in a subset of participants with microelectrode recordings, we found that macro-scale waves co-occurred with micro-scale waves, which in turn were temporally locked to single unit spiking. This temporal coordination between traveling waves at different spatial scales and between waves and neuronal spiking in the human brain suggests a role for traveling waves in neural communication.