Harmonic Brain Modes: A Unifying Framework for Linking Space and Time in Brain Dynamics

Summary

Spontaneous brain activity exhibits coherent oscillations across a wide range of frequencies, with temporal patterns highly correlated across distributed cortical areas, forming resting state networks. This work introduces harmonic brain modes as fundamental building blocks of complex spatiotemporal neural activity, defined as harmonic modes of structural connectivity (connectome harmonics) that yield fully synchronous activity patterns with different frequency oscillations constrained by brain structure. This framework links space and time in brain dynamics. The authors show how harmonic brain modes explain neurophysiological, temporal, and network-level changes across mental states (wakefulness, sleep, anesthesia, psychedelic). Spatial and temporal characteristics emerge from the interplay between excitation and inhibition, fitting changes associated with different mental states, offering tools for understanding brain dynamics in various states of consciousness.

Study at a glance

Abstract

A fundamental characteristic of spontaneous brain activity is coherent oscillations covering a wide range of frequencies. Interestingly, these temporal oscillations are highly correlated among spatially distributed cortical areas forming structured correlation patterns known as the resting state networks, although the brain is never truly at "rest." Here, we introduce the concept of harmonic brain modes-fundamental building blocks of complex spatiotemporal patterns of neural activity. We define these elementary harmonic brain modes as harmonic modes of structural connectivity; that is, connectome harmonics, yielding fully synchronous neural activity patterns with different frequency oscillations emerging on and constrained by the particular structure of the brain. Hence, this particular definition implicitly links the hitherto poorly understood dimensions of space and time in brain dynamics and its underlying anatomy. Further we show how harmonic brain modes can explain the relationship between neurophysiological, temporal, and network-level changes in the brain across different mental states ( wakefulness, sleep, anesthesia, psychedelic). Notably, when decoded as activation of connectome harmonics, spatial and temporal characteristics of neural activity naturally emerge from the interplay between excitation and inhibition and this critical relation fits the spatial, temporal, and neurophysiological changes associated with different mental states. Thus, the introduced framework of harmonic brain modes not only establishes a relation between the spatial structure of correlation patterns and temporal oscillations (linking space and time in brain dynamics), but also enables a new dimension of tools for understanding fundamental principles underlying brain dynamics in different states of consciousness.