Phase coupling in a cerebro-cerebellar network at 8-13 Hz during reading

Words forming a continuous story were presented to 9 subjects at frequencies ranging from 5 to 30 Hz, determined individually to render comprehension easy, effortful, or practically impossible. We identified a left-hemisphere neural network sensitive to reading performance directly from the time courses of activation in the brain, derived from magnetoencephalography data. Regardless of the stimulus rate, communication within the long-range neural network occurred at a frequency of 8--13 Hz. Our coherence-based detection of interconnected nodes reproduced several brain regions that have been previously reported as active in reading tasks, based on traditional contrast estimates. Intriguingly, the face motor cor-tex and the cerebellum, typically associated with speech pro-duction, and the orbitofrontal cortex, linked to visual recognition and working memory, additionally emerged as densely connected components of the network. The left inferior occipitotemporal cortex, involved in early letter-string or word-specific processing, and the cerebellum turned out to be the main forward driving nodes of the network. Synchronization within a subset of nodes formed by the left occipitotemporal, the left superior temporal, and orbito-frontal cortex was increased with the subjects ’ effort to compre-hend the text. Our results link long-range neural synchronization and directionality with cognitive performance