Neuronal oscillations scale up and scale down the brain dynamics

Progress in understanding the global brain dynamics has remained slow to date in large part because of the highly multiscale nature of brain activity. Indeed, normal brain dynamics is characterized by complex interactions between multiple levels: from the microscopic scale of single neurons to the mesoscopic level of local groups of neurons, and finally to the macroscopic level of the whole brain. Among the most difficult tasks are those of identifying which scales are significant for a given particular function and describing how the scales affect each other. It is important to realize that the scales of time and space are linked together, or even intertwined, and that causal inference is far more ambiguous between than within levels. We approach this problem from the perspective of our recent work on simultaneous recording from micro- and macroelectrodes in the human brain. We propose a physiological description of these multilevel interactions, based on phase–amplitude coupling of neuronal oscillations that operate at multiple frequencies and on different spatial scales. Specifically, the amplitude of the oscillations on a particular spatial scale is modulated by phasic variations in neuronal excitability induced by lower frequency oscillations that emerge on a larger spatial scale. Following this general principle, it is possible to scale up or scale down the multiscale brain dynamics. It is expected that large-scale network oscillations in the low-frequency range, mediating downward effects, may play an important role in attention and consciousness.