TY - JOUR T1 - Spontaneous cortical activity transiently organises into frequency specific phase-coupling networks JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/150607 SP - 150607 AU - Diego Vidaurre AU - Laurence T Hunt AU - Andrew J. Quinn AU - Benjamin A.E. Hunt AU - Matthew J. Brookes AU - A.C Nobre AU - M.W. Woolrich Y1 - 2017/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/06/16/150607.abstract N2 - Frequency-specific oscillations and phase-coupling of neuronal populations have been proposed as an essential mechanism for the coordination of activity between brain areas during cognitive tasks. To provide an effective substrate for cognitive function, we reasoned that ongoing functional brain networks should also be able to reorganize and coordinate in a similar manner. To test this hypothesis, we here use a novel method for identifying repeating patterns of network dynamics, and show that resting networks in magnetoencephalography are well characterised by visits to short-lived transient brain states (~50-100ms), with spatially distinct power and phase-coupling in specific frequency bands. Brain states were identified for sensory, motor networks and higher-order cognitive networks; these include a posterior cognitive network in the alpha range (8-12Hz) and an anterior cognitive network in the delta/theta range (1-7Hz). Both cognitive networks exhibit particularly high power and coherence, and contain brain areas corresponding to posterior and anterior subdivisions of the default mode network. Our results show that large-scale cortical phase-coupling networks operate in very specific frequency bands, possibly reflecting functional specialisation at different intrinsic timescales. ER -