Differential modulation of oscillatory activity in the human nucleus accumbens by face perception, target detection and novelty signaling
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1
University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Germany
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2
University Hospital Schleswig-Holstein, Campus Lübeck, Germany
The nucleus accumbens is part of the ventral striatum and numerous studies have reported increased activity in response to rewarding and aversive stimuli. In addition, the nucleus accumbens is thought to operate as a filter for task-relevant information and thus may serve target detection. We tested the involvement of the nucleus accumbens in visual face processing (Experiment 1) and in auditory target detection using a novelty-oddball task (Experiment 2). To this end, we recorded local field potentials from deep brain stimulation electrodes implanted bilaterally in the ventral striatum of a patient suffering from severe obsessive compulsive disorder. In Experiment 1 faces and scrambled versions of the same faces were presented in a visual detection task. During face perception, oscillatory activity in the gamma frequency range (30-90 Hz) was selectively enhanced in the nucleus accumbens. In the novelty-oddball task (Experiment 2) frequent tones (p = 0.8) were interspersed with task-irrelevant unique ‘novel’ sounds (p = 0.1) and task-relevant target tones (p = 0.1). Oscillatory activity in the alpha (8-12 Hz) and the beta range (15-35 Hz) was enhanced in response to target compared to frequent stimuli. ‘Novel’ sounds elicited stronger activity in the alpha-range when compared to frequent stimuli, whereas target stimuli elicited enhanced beta-range activity compared to ‘novel’ sounds. Taken together, our data suggest that the distinct modulation of ventral striatal oscillatory activity plays a critical role in coding different aspects of saliency. Specifically, while beta band activity may signal top-down target detection, an increase of alpha band activity may reflect attentional gating (the bottom-up component of saliency processing) in the nucleus accumbens.
Keywords:
Intra-cranial Electrophysiology,
Oscillatory activity
Conference:
XI International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON XI), Palma, Mallorca, Spain, 25 Sep - 29 Sep, 2011.
Presentation Type:
Poster Presentation
Topic:
Abstracts
Citation:
Schneider
TR,
Moll
CK,
Gulberti
A,
Müsch1
K,
Zurowski
B,
Rasche
D,
Kordon
A,
Gliemroth
J,
Tronnier
VM and
Engel
AK
(2011). Differential modulation of oscillatory activity in the human nucleus accumbens by face perception, target detection and novelty signaling.
Conference Abstract:
XI International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON XI).
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2011.207.00062
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Received:
15 Nov 2011;
Published Online:
25 Nov 2011.
*
Correspondence:
Dr. Till R Schneider, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany, t.schneider@uke.de