title: Characterization of trial-to-trial fluctuations in local field potentials recorded in cerebral cortex of awake behaving macaque.
abstract: In analyzing neurophysiologic data, individual experimental trials are usually assumed to be statistically independent. However, many studies employing functional imaging and electrophysiology have shown that brain activity during behavioral tasks includes temporally correlated trial-to-trial fluctuations. This could lead to spurious results in statistical significance tests used to compare data from different interleaved behavioral conditions presented throughout an experiment. We characterize trial-to-trial fluctuations in local field potentials recorded from the frontal cortex of a macaque monkey performing an oculomotor delayed response task. Our analysis identifies slow fluctuations (<0.1 Hz) of spectral power in 22/27 recording sessions. These trial-to-trial fluctuations are non-Gaussian, and call into question the statistical utility of standard trial shuffling. We compare our results with evidence for slow fluctuations in human functional imaging studies and other electrophysiologic studies in nonhuman primates.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology and Neuroscience, Weill Medical College and Graduate School of Medical Sciences of Cornell University, 1300 York Avenue, New York, NY 10065, USA. David_Menzer@brown.edu
authors.forename: David L
authors.initials: DL
authors.lastname: Menzer
authors.forename: Hemant
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Bokil
authors.forename: Jae Wook
authors.initials: JW
authors.lastname: Ryou
authors.forename: Nicholas D
authors.initials: ND
authors.lastname: Schiff
authors.forename: Keith P
authors.initials: KP
authors.lastname: Purpura
authors.forename: Partha P
authors.initials: PP
authors.lastname: Mitra
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D016477:Artifacts; D005071:Evoked Potentials; D005133:Eye Movements / Q000502:physiology; D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000502:physiology*; D008253:Macaca mulatta; D008297:Male; D008839:Microelectrodes; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010507:Periodicity; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted