Abstract
Background: Prestimulus EEG alpha activity in humans has been considered to reflect ongoing top-down preparation for the performance of subsequent tasks. Since theta oscillations may be related to poststimulus top-down processing, we investigated whether prestimulus EEG theta activity also reflects top-down cognitive preparation for a stimulus.Results: We recorded EEG data from 15 healthy controls performing a color and shape discrimination task, and used the wavelet transformation to investigate the time course and power of oscillatory activity in the signals. We observed a relationship between both anterior theta and posterior alpha power in the prestimulus period and the type of subsequent task.Conclusions: Since task-differences were reflected in both theta and alpha activities prior to stimulus onset, both prestimulus theta (particularly around the anterior region) and prestimulus alpha (particularly around the posterior region) activities may reflect prestimulus top-down preparation for the performance of subsequent tasks.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 79 |
| Journal | BMC Neuroscience |
| Volume | 11 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2010 Jun 28 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This research was supported by the Original Technology Research Program for Brain Science through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MEST) (No. 20100018839) to HJP. We are thankful to Joong Il Kim, Dong-Ha Lee, and Seong Yong Park for helping out during the acquisition of data.
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Neuroscience
- Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience