Encoding and retention of information in memory are associated with a sustained increase in the amplitude of neuronal oscillations for up to several seconds. We reasoned that coordination of oscillatory activity over time might be important for memory and, therefore, that the amplitude modulation of oscillations may be abnormal in Alzheimer disease (AD). To test this hypothesis, we measured magnetoencephalography (MEG) during eyes-closed rest in 19 patients diagnosed with early-stage AD and 16 agematched control subjects and characterized the autocorrelation structure of ongoing oscillations using detrended fluctuation analysis and an analysis of the life-and waiting-time statistics of oscillation bursts. We found that Alzheimer's patients had a strongly reduced incidence of alpha-band oscillation bursts with long life-or waiting-times (< 1 s) over temporo-parietal regions and markedly weaker autocorrelations on long time scales (1-25 seconds). Interestingly, the life-and waiting-times of theta oscillations over medial prefrontal regions were greatly increased. Whereas both temporo-parietal alpha and medial prefrontal theta oscillations are associated with retrieval and retention of information, metabolic and structural deficits in early-stage AD are observed primarily in temporo-parietal areas, suggesting that the enhanced oscillations in medial prefrontal cortex reflect a compensatory mechanism. Together, our results suggest that amplitude modulation of neuronal oscillations is important for cognition and that indices of amplitude dynamics of oscillations may prove useful as neuroimaging biomarkers of early-stage AD.Alzheimer's disease ͉ magnetoencephalography ͉ neuronal oscillations ͉ resting-state brain activity ͉ temporal correlations P sychological and neuroimaging data suggest that the brain performs many important functions during rest, such as retrieval and manipulation of information in short-term memory, and problem-solving and planning (1, 2). These resting-state functions may represent an essential aspect of human selfawareness and are susceptible to impairment in brain-related disorders including depression, schizophrenia, and dementia (3).Neuroimaging has identified anatomical patterns of activity that are remarkably consistent across resting-state experiments, most notably in the precuneus, lateral parietal and medial prefrontal cortices (4, 5). The existence of such a ''resting-state network'' has been suggested to reflect a ''default mode'' of brain operation in the absence of goal-directed behavior (6). Coordination of anatomically distributed activity during rest has been studied extensively by computing correlations between neuronal signals from different brain areas (Fig. 1). This approach has revealed aberrant resting-state networks in Alzheimer disease (AD) (7-9) and other disorders (4, 10, 11).For cognitive processing, coordination of local brain activity over time may be just as important as the coordination of simultaneous activity in anatomically distinct brain regions and may be refl...