The Palva lab wishes everyone a merry Christmas!

Our preprint "Brain criticality predicts individual synchronization levels in humans" is now available on bioRxiv.

We show in MEG and SEEG resting-state data that phase synchrony is correlated with long-range temporal correlations (LRTCs). In healthy participants and brain areas, correlations were either linearly positive or quadratic, while in the epileptogenic zone correlations were negative. These results support our hypothesis that variability in synchronization levels is regulated by the individual position along an extended critical-like regime, with healthy brain areas tending to operate in its subcritical and epileptogenic areas in its supercritical side

Fusca M, Siebenhühner F, Wang SH, Myrov V, Arnulfo G, Nobili L, Palva JM, Palva S(2022). Brain criticality predicts individual synchronization levels in humans.

Our preprint about brain criticality in ADHD is now available on bioRxiv.

We investigated MEG data from ADHD patients and healthy controls carrying out a threshold stimulus detection task and a Go/NoGo task. Long-range temporal correlations (LRTCs) were found to be aberrant in ADHD compared to controls in both behavioral performance and neuronal oscillations, pointing towards a mechanism for attentional fluctuations in ADHD. The strongest LRTCs were observed for moderate symptom scores. As strong LRTCs are associated with optimal cognitive performance, our results imply that mild ADHD may actually be beneficial for cognition.

Hirvonen J, Haque H, Wang SH, Simola J, Morales-Munoz I, Cowley BJ, Palva JM, Palva S(2022). Is mild ADHD beneficial? Brain criticality is maximal with moderate ADHD symptom scores.

Our paper about cognitive prediction in music perception has been published in Neuroimage: Reports.

We investigated with magnetoencephalography the mismatch negativity (MMN) prediction error signal in 104 adults having varying levels of musical expertise. Brain regions involved in early auditory processing were associated with low-level acoustic priors such as tuning and timbre, while higher-level brain regions such as cingulate and orbitofrontal cortices were associated with melodic errors. Musicians showed higher involvement of higher-level regions.

Bonetti L, Carlomagno F, Kliuchko M, Gold BP, Palva S, Haumann NT, Tervaniemi M, Huotilainen M, Vuust P, Brattico E (2022). Whole-brain computation of cognitive versus acoustic errors in music: A mismatch negativity study.

Our paper on genetic polymorphisms in COMT and BDNF has been published in iScience.

We show that oscillation amplitudes and long-range temporal correlations in MEG data are affected by both COMT and BNDF polymorphisms, and phase synchronization by BDNF alone. Comparisons to computational models indicate that these polymorphisms modulated the neuronal E/I balance, and thereby how close the brain operates to the critical point.

Simola J, Siebenhühner F, Myrov V, Kantojärvi K, Paunio T, Palva JM, Brattico E, Palva S (2022). Genetic polymorphisms in COMT and BDNF influence synchronization dynamics of human neuronal oscillations.

Our preprint on critical-like bistable dynamics is now available on bioRxiv.

We show that human brain activity in both MEG and SEEG data exhibits bistable dynamics. Moderate levels of bistability were positively correlated with executive functioning, while excessive bistability was associated with epileptic pathophysiology. These results indicate that bistability is important for healthy brain function and expand the framework of brain criticality.

Wang SH, Arnulfo G, Myrov V, Siebenhühner F, Nobili L, Breakspear M, Palva S, Palva JM (2022). Critical-like bistable dynamics in the resting-state human brain.

Our paper on event-related responses in natural speech has been published in NeuroImage.

We investigated neural correlates of chunk boundaries intuitively identified by listeners in natural speech using magneto- and electroencephalography (MEEG). Our results indicate that brain responses to chunk boundaries of natural speech can be modulated by the relative strength of different linguistic cues, such as syntactic structure and prosody.

Anurova I, Vetchinnikova S, Dobrego A, Williams N, Mikusova N, Suni A, Mauranen A, Palva S (2022). Event-related responses reflect chunk boundaries in natural speech.

Sheng Wang's thesis (https://helda.helsinki.fi/handle/10138/334445) won the Best PhD Dissertation (2021) in the Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences award. Congratulations!

Congratulations to Sheng Wang for receiving a one-year personal grant from the Sigrid Juselius foundation (https://www.sigridjuselius.fi/) for Post Doctoral Research in the field of Medicine, and a one-year personal grant from the Finnish cultural foundation (https://skr.fi/) Post Doc Pool for Post Doctoral Research in the field of Medicine.

We congratulate Felix Siebenhühner for receiving a 2-year postdoctoral research grant from the Finnish Cultural Foundation (https://skr.fi/) for researching critical dynamics in health and depression!

Sheng Wang defended his thesis "Critical bistability and large-scale synchrony in human brain dynamics" and received a "Pass with Distinction". His opponent was Dr. Philippe Ciuciu (https://philippeciuciu.fr/), the Research Director at NeuroSpin (CEA), Paris-Saclay.