Electrophysiological Low-Frequency Coherence and Cross-Frequency Coupling Contribute to BOLD Connectivity

Abstract

Brain networks are commonly defined using correlations between blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) signals in different brain areas. Although evidence suggests that gamma band (30–100 Hz) neural activity contributes to local BOLD signals, the neural basis of inter-areal BOLD correlations is unclear. We first defined a visual network in monkeys based on converging evidence from inter-areal BOLD correlations during a fixation task, task-free state and anesthesia, and then simultaneously recorded local field potentials (LFPs) from the same four network areas in the task-free state. Low frequency oscillations (< 20 Hz), and not gamma activity, predominantly contributed to inter-areal BOLD correlations. The low frequency oscillations also influenced local processing by modulating gamma activity within individual areas. We suggest that such cross-frequency coupling links local BOLD signals to BOLD correlations across distributed networks.