No abstract

A rich repertoire of oscillatory signals is detected from human brains with electro- and magnetoencephalography (EEG/MEG). However, the principles underwriting coherent oscillations and their link with neural activity remain unclear. Here, we hypothesise that the emergence of transient brain rhythms is a signature of weakly stable synchronization between spatially distributed brain areas, occurring at network-specific collective frequencies due to non-negligible conduction times. We test this hypothesis using a phenomenological network model to simulate interactions between neural mass potentials (resonating at 40Hz) in the structural connectome. Crucially, we identify a critical regime where metastable oscillatory modes emerge spontaneously in the delta (0.5-4Hz), theta (4-8Hz), alpha (8-13Hz) and beta (13-30Hz) frequency bands from weak synchronization of subsystems, closely approximating the MEG power spectra from 89 healthy individuals. Grounded in the physics of delay-coupled oscillators, these numerical analyses demonstrate the role of the spatiotemporal connectome in structuring brain activity in the frequency domain.