Visual gamma oscillations predict sensory sensitivity in females as they do in males

Scientific Reports. 2021. Vol. 11. No. 1. P. 1–10.

Viktoriya O. Manyukhina, Rostovtseva E., Prokofyev A., Obukhova T., Schneiderman J., Stroganova T., Orekhova E.

Gamma oscillations are driven by local cortical excitatory (E)–inhibitory (I) loops and may help to
characterize neural processing involving excitatory-inhibitory interactions. In the visual cortex
reliable gamma oscillations can be recorded with magnetoencephalography (MEG) in the majority
of individuals, which makes visual gamma an attractive candidate for biomarkers of brain disorders
associated with E/I imbalance. Little is known, however, about if/how these oscillations reflect
individual differences in neural excitability and associated sensory/perceptual phenomena. The power
of visual gamma response (GR) changes nonlinearly with increasing stimulation intensity: it increases
with transition from static to slowly drifting high-contrast grating and then attenuates with further
increase in the drift rate. In a recent MEG study we found that the GR attenuation predicted sensitivity
to sensory stimuli in everyday life in neurotypical adult men and in men with autism spectrum
disorders. Here, we replicated these results in neurotypical female participants. The GR enhancement
with transition from static to slowly drifting grating did not correlate significantly with the sensory
sensitivity measures. These findings suggest that weak velocity-related attenuation of the GR is a
reliable neural concomitant of visual hypersensitivity and that the degree of GR attenuation may
provide useful information about E/I balance in the visual cortex.

Keywords: Magnetoencephalography (MEG), gamma oscillations, sensory sensitivity