Aiming at local field potential, the present paper introduces a method of estimating lag of neuron activities between brain areas based on windowed Harmonic wavelet transform (WHWT). Firstly, the WHWT of signals of two brain areas are calculated. Secondly, the instantaneous amplitude of the signals is calculated and finally, these amplitudes are cross-correlated and the lag at which the cross-correlation peak occurs is determined as the lag of neurons activities. Comparing with amplitude cross-correlation based on Gabor wavelet transform (GWT) or Hilbert transform (HT), this method is more precise and efficient in estimating the directionality and lag.
Brain ; physiology ; Humans ; Neurons ; physiology ; Wavelet Analysis

Selective attention promotes the perception of brain to outside world and coordinates the allocation of limited brain resources. It is a cognitive process which relies on the neural activities of attention-related brain network. As one of the important forms of brain activities, neural oscillations are closely related to selective attention. In recent years, the relationship between selective attention and neural oscillations has become a hot issue. The new method that using external rhythmic stimuli to influence neural oscillations, i.e., neural entrainment, provides a promising approach to investigate the relationship between selective attention and neural oscillations. Moreover, it provides a new method to diagnose and even to treat the attention dysfunction. This paper reviewed the research status on the relationship between selective attention and neural oscillations, and focused on the application prospects of neural entrainment in revealing this relationship and diagnosing, even treating the attention dysfunction.
Attention ; Brain ; physiology ; Humans ; Neurons ; physiology

Genetic tools, which can be used for the morphology study of specific neurons, pathway-selective connectome mapping, neuronal activity monitoring, and manipulation with a spatiotemporal resolution, have been widely applied to the understanding of complex neural circuit formation, interactions, and functions in rodents. Recently, similar genetic approaches have been tried in non-human primates (NHPs) in neuroscience studies for dissecting the neural circuits involved in sophisticated behaviors and clinical brain disorders, although they are still very preliminary. In this review, we introduce the progress made in the development and application of genetic tools for brain studies on NHPs. We also discuss the advantages and limitations of each approach and provide a perspective for using genetic tools to study the neural circuits of NHPs.
Animals ; Primates/physiology* ; Brain/physiology* ; Connectome

The population receptive field (pRF) of a voxel is the joint receptive field of the population of neurons within the voxel. Using a non-invasive pRF technique, researcher can estimate the pRF position and size parameters of each voxel in human brain. These pRF parameters provide an excellent research basis to study neural mechanisms of sensory perception. Although the pRF technique has developed very rapidly in recent years and been widely used in the field of neural mechanisms of sensory perception, related review article is still absent. Here, we provide an overview of the pRF technique. First, we briefly introduce research methods of this technique. Next, we focus on applications of this technique in the field of neural mechanisms of sensory perception. Then, we discuss advantages and limitations of the pRF technique in practical application. In the end, we give some suggestions on the future application direction of the pRF technique. The pRF technique has played an important role in the research of neural mechanism of sensory perception, and it would play a more important role in the future.
Brain ; physiology ; Brain Mapping ; Humans ; Neurons ; Perception

Cognitive control refers to the brain functions that regulate variously specific mental activities in terms of task goal, forming the basis of goal-guided behaviors. In the last decade, our team devoted to investigating the neural mechanisms of basic functions of cognitive control, i.e., monitoring, controlling, and switching. We published a series of papers on the temporal course of monitoring initiating cognitive control and its mechanisms, the influential scope of controlling and new controlling mechanisms, brain networks related to controlling efficiency, brain hubs and neural dynamic encoding of switching. This paper reviews the related studies and further extracts their theoretical significance. In the future, more attention should be paid on causal studies, studies on functional implementation of cognitive control, and transfer-application studies, by which we expect to deeply elucidate neural mechanisms of cognitive control.
Brain ; physiology ; Brain Mapping ; Cognition ; Humans

It is an important means to study the electrical activity of the brain's nerve cells by exploring physiological information of the EEGs from the frequency domain. The gravity frequency is one of the global parameters with using this method. We used the multitaper spectrum method (MTM) spectrum estimation method of good performance to calculate the EEG spectrum and its gravity frequency of subjects under vigilance and vigilance decrement state. The results showed that the gravity frequency of vigilance state was higher than that of vigilance decrement state, the gravity frequency became smaller along with the vigilance decrement, and the location of the gravity frequency shifted to the left in the spectrum. Finally, the monitoring curve of the gravity frequency was acquired by designing an algorithm, and it was used to online monitoring vigilance operators.
Algorithms ; Brain ; physiology ; Electroencephalography ; Humans

As a complex system, the topology of human's brain network has an important effect on further study of brain's structural and functional mechanism. Graph theory, a kind of sophisticated analytic strategies, is widely used for analyzing complex brain networks effectively and comparing difference of topological structure alteration in normal development and pathological condition. For the purpose of using this analysis methodology efficiently, it is necessary to develop graph-based visualization software. Thus, we developed VisConnectome, which displays analysis results of the brain network friendly and intuitively. It provides an original graphical user interface (GUI) including the tool window, tool bar and innovative double slider filter, brain region bar, runs in any Windows operating system and doesn't rely on any platform such as Matlab. When importing the user-defined script file that initializes the brain network, VisConnectome abstracts the brain network to the ball-and-stick model and render it. VisConnectome allows a series of visual operations, such as identifying nodes and connection, modifying properties of nodes and connection such as color and size with the color palette and size double slider, imaging the brain regions, filtering the brain network according to its size property in a specific domain as simplification and blending with the brain surface as a context of the brain network. Through experiment and analysis, we conclude that VisConnectome is an effective visualization software with high speed and quality, which helps researchers to visualize and compare the structural and functional brain networks flexibly.
Brain ; physiology ; Connectome ; Humans ; Software

Extracellular recording is a key technology to study many types of brain functions. However the amplitudes of extracellular spikes are typically about 100 muV and should be picked up and amplified specially, then recorded and analyzed online. Most of the equipment for extracellular recording are either very expensive, or too large for recording in the brains of freely moving small animals. In this paper we developed a practical multi-electrode recording system based on virtual testing technology. The system includes microelectrode amplifier, analog input device NI4472 with 24-bit resolution, and data processing software SPKrec. The features of the hardware are low noise, high input impedance, a total gain of 2 000, and large dynamic range. The software developed in LabVIEW is capable of online analysis, data recording, spike detection, fire rate histograms, etc. The system functions have been verified in extracellular recording in the olfactory bulb of Gekko gecko. The result indicates that the system with performance comparable to that of commercial products meets the requirements of recording experiments.
Animals ; Brain ; physiology ; Lizards ; physiology ; Microelectrodes ; Olfactory Bulb ; physiology

In this paper the state of emotion study using electroencephalogram is systemically introduced. The methods for emotion study including the analyses of EEG frequency spectrum, evoked potentials, event-related potentials and the non-linear dynamical analysis are summarized, and the latest development is reviewed. Lastly the effect of emotion on other brain functions, e.g. memory, is discussed. In the paper the developments of emotion studies are also predicted.
Brain ; physiology ; Electroencephalography ; Emotions ; physiology ; Evoked Potentials ; physiology ; Humans

Androgen plays an important role in singing of songbirds. Recent studies have shown that androgen levels in vivo not only affect the external morphology of songbirds, but also affect their singing behavior. Androgens (including derivatives) affect singing behavior and singing system in many ways. Based mainly on the results from our research group in the zebra finch, this review summarizes the effects of androgen on singing behavior, excitability and synaptic transmission of projection neurons of singing system, and the interaction of androgen with other neurotransmitter receptors in the brain of songbirds.
Androgens ; physiology ; Animals ; Brain ; physiology ; Songbirds ; physiology ; Vocalization, Animal