POSTER PRESENTATION Open Access Phase transitions in cortical dynamics explain improved information processing under attention

A major aspect of cortical information processing is its rapid adaptation to the actual behavioral demands. Highly representative for such processes is selective visual attention, which has been shown to improve per-formance in visual perception (see e.g. [1]). The neural mechanisms supporting these effects have been investi-gated in electrophysiological studies: Besides firing rate modulations and tuning curve changes in visual cortical neurons, they revealed a strong increase of oscillations in the gamma frequency band (35-90 Hz) [2]. These findings indicate that gamma oscillations might play an important role in optimizing information processing under attention, but their functional role is currently not yet understood. The dynamics of cortical networks exhibit certain prop