Spatiotemporal dynamics of maximal and minimal EEG spectral power

Oscillatory neural activities are prevalent in the brain with their phase realignment contributing to the coordination of neural communication. Phase realignments may have especially strong (or weak) impact when neural activities are strongly synchronized (or desynchronized) within the interacting populations. We report that the spatiotemporal dynamics of strong regional synchronization measured as maximal EEG spectral power—referred to as activation—and strong regional desynchronization measured as minimal EEG spectral power—referred to as suppression—are characterized by the spatial segregation of small-scale and large-scale networks. Specifically, small-scale spectral-power activations and suppressions involving only 2–7% (1–4 of 60) of EEG scalp sites were prolonged (relative to stochastic dynamics) and consistently co-localized in a frequency specific manner. For example, the small-scale networks for θ, α, β1, and β2 bands (4–30 Hz) consistently included frontal sites when the eyes were closed, whereas the small-scale network for γ band (31–55 Hz) consistently clustered in medial-central-posterior sites whether the eyes were open or closed. Large-scale activations and suppressions involving over 17–30% (10–18 of 60) of EEG sites were also prolonged and generally clustered in regions complementary to where small-scale activations and suppressions clustered. In contrast, intermediate-scale activations and suppressions (involving 7–17% of EEG sites) tended to follow stochastic dynamics and were less consistently localized. These results suggest that strong synchronizations and desynchronizations tend to occur in small-scale and large-scale networks that are spatially segregated and frequency specific. These synchronization networks may broadly segregate the relatively independent and highly cooperative oscillatory processes while phase realignments fine-tune the network configurations based on behavioral demands.