Characterizing the local oscillatory content of spontaneous cortical activity during mental imagery

We report on the determination of detailed spectra for simultaneously active sources of spontaneous neuronal activity in humans directly from data recorded with a whole-scalp 122-channel magnetometer array. Subjects rested with eyes open and performed two contrasting mental imagery tasks: the imagination of the self-performance of a motor activity and the silent generation of a chain of words. A novel analysis technique, frequency-domain signal-space projection (FDSSP) was utilized to determine the temporal and spectral characteristics of spontaneous brain activity at specific cortical sites. Although intersubject differences were significant, spectra for individual subjects contained task-dependent features which were reproducible over successive 20-s epochs. This result supports the concept of multiple sources of spontaneous cortical activity and suggests that detailed spectra of localized oscillatory activity obtained non-invasively with magnetoencephalographic arrays may provide a useful characterization of cortical involvement in mental imagery.