A Blueprint for the Study of the Brain's Spatiotemporal Patterns

Abstract: The functioning of an organ such as the brain emerges from interactions between its constituent parts. Further, this interaction is not immutable in time but rather unfolds in a succession of patterns, thereby allowing the brain to adapt to constantly changing exterior and interior milieus. This calls for a framework able to study patterned spatiotemporal interactions between components of the brain. A theoretical and methodological framework is developed to study the brain's coordination dynamics. Here we present a toolset designed to decipher the continuous dynamics of electrophysiological data and its relation to (dys-) function. Understanding the spatiotemporal organization of brain patterns and their association with behavioral, cognitive and clinically-relevant variables is an important challenge for the fields of neuroscience and biologically-inspired engineering. It is hoped that such a comprehensive framework will shed light not only on human behavior and the human mind but also help in understanding the growing number of pathologies that are linked to disorders of brain connectivity.