HUMAN ALPHA BAND ACTIVITY AND THE SUPPRESSION OF IRRELEVANT VISUAL INFORMATION: CONVERGING EVIDENCE FROM ELECTROENCEPHALOGRAPHY AND TRANSCRANIAL MAGNETIC STIMULATION

To increase efficiency of information processing in cognitive systems with limited capacity, it is important to suppress irrelevant information. In visual attention and short-term memory functions, such selection of only relevant information is essential. Evidence from human electroencephalography will be presented indicating that oscillatory brain activity around 10 Hz (so called alpha activity) reflects cortical inhibition, and as a consequence is a neural correlate of suppression of irrelevant information processing in visuospatial attention tasks and during short-term memory storage. Causality of this relation will be demonstrated by the usage of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation. It will be shown that entrainment of 10 Hz activity supports suppression of irrelevant information in short-term memory storage and thus increases efficiency of memory processes