Past events: Professor Joachim Gross, PhD. Cycles of coordination and communication in the human brain

What: Cycles of coordination and communication in the human brain

Where: BCBL Auditorium

Who: Joachim Gross, Director of the Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging and Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator, University of Glasgow, UK.

When: 10:30 am

There is a growing number of studies demonstrating a temporal reorganization of human brain oscillations in response to complex quasi-rhythmic stimuli such as speech. The reorganization is characterized by a temporal alignment of frequency-specific brain activity to stimulus features. However, the differential contributions of bottom-up and top-down processes to this alignment have remained largely unknown. Furthermore, we are just beginning to understand what physical stimulus features and what linguistic structures are entraining brain activity. Recent studies suggest that this entrainment reflects cognitive processes of temporal coding, segmentation and prediction that are orchestrated by hierarchically organized brain oscillations. In my presentation I will give an overview of our recent studies in this field and present new developments. I will discuss how rhythmic brain activity could support the processing of complex, naturalistic stimuli and, ultimately, facilitates human communication.