Biology subjects

Aronson, J. P.

Publications and source records attributed to Aronson, J. P..

5 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2026

Toward A Whole-Brain Interface Enabled by High-Resolution Surface Electrophysiology

The goal of building a whole-brain interface - capable of generating a real-time digital representation of the state of the entire central nervous system - has long been framed as a hardware challenge of recording simultaneously from ever-larger numbers of microelectrodes. Advances in high-resolution neural interfaces now enable electrophysiologic interaction with the human nervous system at spatial and temporal resolutions previously unattainable without disrupting tissue architecture or physiology. These capabilities create new opportunities for mechanistic neuroscience, neuroprosthetics, and precision-guided neurosurgery. With the advent of modern microelectrode array technology, however, the whole-brain interface has also become a data challenge. Rather than pursuing large-scale human brain recording purely through a single device placed in a single patient, we demonstrate here that systematic multi-subject aggregation, across brain regions and behavioral paradigms, in a common anatomical framework, can achieve something functionally similar to a whole-brain interface. Here we present an approach to a functional atlas of the human central nervous system derived from high-resolution surface electrophysiology recordings obtained in the first 70 patients implanted with an anatomically conformal, thin-film neural interface positioned in more than 100 locations. The atlas comprises >100,000 electrode deployments and catalogs placement across a broad range of neuroanatomic targets spanning the motor, sensory, language, auditory, and associative domains, as well as brainstem and spinal cord structures that have historically been difficult to access at high electrophysiologic resolution. Across participants, aggregated recordings reveal somatotopic organization, including digit representations that follow a lateral-to-medial ordering consistent with classical homuncular maps, with transitions between adjacent representations occurring over spatial scales of approximately 0.8 - 2.0 mm; canonical frequency-band signatures, such as movement-related beta-band suppression and focal high-gamma (70 - 200 Hz) increases during motor and speech behaviors; and task-modulated population dynamics in both evoked and spontaneous activity across cortical, brainstem, and spinal cord regions. These findings yield insight into patterns of mesoscale electrophysiological dynamics conserved across the entire human central nervous system, suggesting that fine-scale functional organization is preserved across individuals when aligned to common anatomical landmarks. We further demonstrate several applications of these high-resolution recordings, including real-time neural decoding from upper extremity motor cortex to enable real-time neuroprosthetic control, and from ventrolateral cortex to decode cortical correlates of spoken language, facial movements, and complex facial expressions of emotion, supporting initial feasibility of combined verbal and nonverbal communication interfaces. Together, these results establish a paradigm for approaching large-scale interfaces with the human brain, as well as a starting point for a scalable, extensible atlas of human electrophysiologic function designed to accelerate discovery across basic neuroscience, translational research, and clinical neurotechnology.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2025

Neural components underlying successful free recall are specific to episodic memory

AbstractEpisodic memory depends upon activity distributed across the brain. However, the activity underlying memory has largely been examined within single tasks in isolation. Thus it is unclear to what extent prior findings reflect task-general rather than memory-specific cognitive processes. Here we address this question using data from 371 patients recorded intracranially who performed a free recall task with encoding and retrieval phases alongside an arithmetic distractor phase. We ask whether neural decoders fit to predict behavior from one phase transfer to the others. Encoding-retrieval transfer exceeds both arithmetic-encoding and arithmetic-retrieval transfer and therefore cannot be explained solely by processes supporting arithmetic. We further detect transfer between arithmetic and retrieval but not between arithmetic and encoding. The brain-behavioral relations observed in these tasks thus do not merely reflect a single task-general factor of activity. We propose cross-task decoding as a method for identifying the neural factor structure underlying distinct cognitive processes.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2023

Study-Phase Reinstatement: Encoding Spontaneous Thoughts as Memories

Can the brain improve the retrievability of an experience after it has occurred? Systems consolidation theory proposes that item-specific cortical reactivation during post-encoding rest periods facilitates the formation of stable memory representations, a prediction supported by neural evidence in humans and animals. Such reactivation may also occur on shorter time scales, offering a potential account of classic list memory phenomena but lacking in support from neural data. Leveraging the high-temporal specificity of intracranial electroencephalography (iEEG), we investigate spontaneous reactivation of previously experienced items during brief intervals between individual encoding events. Across two large-scale free recall experiments, we show that reactivation during these periods, measured by spectral iEEG similarity, predicts subsequent recall. In a third experiment, we show that the same methodology can identify post-encoding reactivation that correlates with subsequent memory, consistent with previous results. Thus, spontaneous study-phase reinstatement reliably predicts memory behavior, linking psychological accounts to neural mechanisms and providing evidence for rapid consolidation processes during encoding.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2023

Functional and anatomical connectivity predict brain stimulation's mnemonic effects

Closed-loop direct brain stimulation is a promising tool for modulating neural activity and behavior. However, it remains unclear how to optimally target stimulation to modulate brain activity in particular brain networks that underlie particular cognitive functions. Here, we test the hypothesis that stimulations behavioral and physiological effects depend on the stimulation targets anatomical and functional network properties. We delivered closed-loop stimulation as 47 neurosurgical patients studied and recalled word lists. Multivariate classifiers, trained to predict momentary lapses in memory function, triggered stimulation of the lateral temporal cortex (LTC) during the study phase of the task. We found that LTC stimulation specifically improved memory when delivered to targets near white matter pathways. Memory improvement was largest for targets near white matter that also showed high functional connectivity to the brains memory network. These targets also reduced low-frequency activity in this network, an established marker of successful memory encoding. These data reveal how anatomical and functional networks mediate stimulations behavioral and physiological effects, provide further evidence that closed-loop LTC stimulation can improve episodic memory, and suggest a method for optimizing neuromodulation through improved stimulation targeting.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2021

Minimal functional alignment of ventromedial prefrontal cortex intracranial EEG signals during naturalistic viewing

The ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) has been thought to play an important role in processing endogenous information such as generating subjective affective meaning. Unlike sensory cortex, which processes exogenous information about the external world similarly across individuals, prior work has posited that vmPFC activity may be idiosyncratic to each individual, even when exposed to the same external stimulus. In this study, we recorded local field potentials (LFPs) from intracranial stereotactic electrodes implanted in patients with intractable epilepsy while they watched an emotionally engaging television show episode and evaluated temporal synchronization of these signals across participants in auditory cortex and vmPFC. Overall, we observed markedly lower intersubject synchronization of signals recorded from electrodes implanted in vmPFC compared to auditory cortex. A subset of patients, however, appeared to share similar vmPFC states during the more emotionally salient scenes. This work suggests that the vmPFC is involved in processing affective responses to ongoing experience in a state-like manner, but the specific states and temporal sequences are idiosyncratic to each individual, even when viewing the same television episode.

neuroscience↗