TY - JOUR T1 - Transduction of the Geomagnetic Field as Evidenced from Alpha-band Activity in the Human Brain JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/448449 SP - 448449 AU - Connie X. Wang AU - Isaac A. Hilburn AU - Daw-An Wu AU - Yuki Mizuhara AU - Christopher P. Cousté AU - Jacob N. H. Abrahams AU - Sam E. Bernstein AU - Ayumu Matani AU - Shinsuke Shimojo AU - Joseph L. Kirschvink Y1 - 2018/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/10/20/448449.abstract N2 - Magnetoreception, the perception of the geomagnetic field, is a sensory modality well-established across all major groups of vertebrates and some invertebrates, but its presence in humans has been tested rarely, yielding inconclusive results. We report here a strong, specific human brain response to ecologically-relevant rotations of Earth-strength magnetic fields. Following geomagnetic stimulation, a drop in amplitude of EEG alpha oscillations (8-13 Hz) occurred in a repeatable manner. Termed alpha event-related desynchronization (alpha-ERD), such a response is associated with sensory and cognitive processing of external stimuli. Biophysical tests showed that the neural response was sensitive to the dynamic components and axial alignment of the field but also to the static components and polarity of the field. This pattern of results implicates ferromagnetism as the biophysical basis for the sensory transduction and provides a basis to start the behavioral exploration of human magnetoreception. ER -