Abstract
Neuroimaging researchers tacitly assume that body-position scantily affects neural activity. However, whereas participants in most psychological experiments sit upright, many modern neuroimaging techniques (e.g., fMRI) require participants to lie supine. Sparse findings from electroencephalography and positron emission tomography suggest that body position influences cognitive processes and neural activity. Here we leverage multi-postural magnetoencephalography (MEG) to further unravel how physical stance alters baseline brain activity. We present resting-state MEG data from 12 healthy participants in three orthostatic conditions (i.e., lying supine, reclined at 45°, and sitting upright). Our findings demonstrate that upright, compared to reclined or supine, posture increases left-hemisphere high-frequency oscillatory activity over common speech areas. This proof-of-concept experiment establishes the feasibility of using MEG to examine the influence of posture on brain dynamics. We highlight the advantages and methodological challenges inherent to this approach and lay the foundation for future studies to further investigate this important, albeit little-acknowledged, procedural caveat.
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Acknowledgments
Dr. Amir Raz acknowledges funding from the Canada Research Chair program, Discovery and Discovery Acceleration Supplement grants from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), Canadian Institutes of Health Research, and the BIAL Foundation. Robert T. Thibault acknowledges a Fonds de recherche du Québec - Nature et technologies (FRQNT) graduate scholarship and an Alexander Graham Bell Canada Graduate Scholarship from NSERC. Michael Lifshitz acknowledges a Francisco J. Varela Research Award from the Mind and Life Institute and a Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship from NSERC.
Conflict of interest
Robert T. Thibault, Michael Lifshitz, and Amir Raz declare that they have no conflict of interest.
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All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, and the applicable revisions at the time of the investigation. Informed consent was obtained from all participants included in the study.
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Thibault, R.T., Lifshitz, M. & Raz, A. Body position alters human resting-state: Insights from multi-postural magnetoencephalography. Brain Imaging and Behavior 10, 772–780 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11682-015-9447-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11682-015-9447-8