A manifold of heterogeneous brain states across cortical areas

Brain states are conventionally divided into wake, slow wave sleep (SWS) and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep based on distinct patterns of neural activity and muscle tone. These canonical brain states are thought to be discrete, temporally sustained, and spatially global. While some evidence of transition states, spatially local, and temporally brief states shows violation of these canonical assumption, no alternative framework exists to comprehensively and systematically quantify the spatiotemporal dynamics of global brain state. Here we provide such a framework to describe the spatiotemporal continuum of varying brain states We used simultaneously recorded multi-day electromyogram (EMG) and local field potentials (LFP) across the cortex to obtain low-dimensional representation of brain states and quantify their spatiotemporal dynamics. We found differences in state expression across the cortex, such as a lack of REM-like activity in the lateral somatosensory cortex, stereotyped patterns of state transitions across the cortex, and evidence of temporally and spatially local microstates.

A manifold of heterogeneous brain states across cortical areas