Descripción: The electroencephalogram (EEG) together with electromyogram (EMG) of the ischiocavernosus, bulbocavernosus and levator penis muscles were chronically monitored across behavioral states of the armadillo Chaetophractus villosus. This animal has a very long penis, which exhibits remarkable phenomena during wakefulness (W), slow wave sleep (SWS) and paradoxical sleep (PS). During W it remains retracted within a skin receptacle. During SWS penile protrusion can be observed together with very complex movements. Protrusion is a non erectile event during which the penis remains out of its receptacle but without rigidity. Penile erections are observed only during SWS. Contrasting with other mammals, no erections occur during PS. During this phase the penile muscles share the atonia of the body musculature characteristic of that phase. Some reflections on mechanisms of those penile events are presented.

Descripción: In this paper we propose a method, based on the Gabor transform, to quantify and visualize the time evolution of the traditional frequency bands defined in the analysis of electroencephalogram (EEG) series. The information obtained in this way can be used for the information transfer analyses of the epileptic seizure as well as for their characterization. We found an optimal correlation between EEG visual inspection and the proposed method in the characterization of paroxism, spikes, and other transient alterations of background activity. The dynamical changes during an epileptic seizure are shown through the phase portrait. The method proposed was examplified with EEG series obtained with depth electrodes in refractory epileptic patients. © 1995 The American Physical Society.

Descripción: Recent experimental results suggest that basal electroencephalogram (EEG)changes reflect the widespread functional evolution in neuronal circuits, occurring in chicken brain during the "synapse maturation" period, between 3 and 8 weeks' posthatch. In present work a quantitative analysis based on the Algorithmic Complexity (Lempel and Ziv Complexity) is performed. It is shown that this complexity presents a peak at week 2 posthatch 2, and a tendency to stabilize its values after the week 5 posthatch. © 2007 American Institute of Physics.

Descripción: In this paper we compare two methods, based on the Gabor and wavelet transforms, to quantify and visualize the time evolution of frequency contents of electroencephalogram (EEG) time series. We found an optimal correlation between EEG visual inspection and the proposed methods in the characterization of the frequency and energy content of characteristic activity during an epileptic seizure. The quasimonofrequency behavior observed in the epileptic EEG series, in a previous work using a Gabor analysis [J. Inst. Electr. Eng. 93, 429 (1946)], is confirmed with the analysis using a wavelet. Moreover, the method based on the wavelet transform allows us to build a detector of epileptic events. Both methods are exemplified with EEG series obtained with depth electrodes in refractory epileptic patients. © 1996 The American Physical Society.

Descripción: Previous studies of musical creativity suggest that this process involves multi-regional intra and interhemispheric interactions, particularly in the prefrontal cortex. However, the activity of the prefrontal cortex and that of the parieto-temporal regions, seems to depend on the domains of creativity that are evaluated and the task that is performed. In the field of music, only few studies have investigated the brain process of a creative task and none of them have investigated the effect of the level of creativity on the recruit networks. In this work we used magnetic resonance imaging to explore these issues by comparing the brain activities of subjects with higher creative abilities to those with lesser abilities, while the subjects improvised on different rhythmic fragments. We evaluated the products the subjects created during the fMRI scan using two musical parameters: fluidity and flexibility, and classified the subjects according to their punctuation. We examined the relation between brain activity and creativity level. Subjects with higher abilities generated their own creations based on modifications of the original rhythm with little adhesion to it. They showed activation in prefrontal regions of both hemispheres and the right insula. Subjects with lower abilities made only partial changes to the original musical patterns. In these subjects, activation was only observed in left unimodal areas. We demonstrated that the activations of prefrontal and paralimbic areas, such as the insula, are related to creativity level, which is related to a widespread integration of networks that are mainly associated with cognitive, motivational and emotional processes. © 2013 Villarreal et al.

Descripción: Despite the compelling contribution of the study of event related potentials (ERPs) and eye movements to cognitive neuroscience, these two approaches have largely evolved independently. We designed an eye-movement visual search paradigm that allowed us to concurrently record EEG and eye movements while subjects were asked to find a hidden target face in a crowded scene with distractor faces. Fixation event-related potentials (fERPs) to target and distractor stimuli showed the emergence of robust sensory components associated with the perception of stimuli and cognitive components associated with the detection of target faces. We compared those components with the ones obtained in a control task at fixation: qualitative similarities as well as differences in terms of scalp topography and latency emerged between the two. By using single trial analyses, fixations to target and distractors could be decoded from the EEG signals above chance level in 11 out of 12 subjects. Our results show that EEG signatures related to cognitive behavior develop across spatially unconstrained exploration of natural scenes and provide a first step towards understanding the mechanisms of target detection during natural search. © 2013 The Authors.