Vortices in Brain Waves

Interactions by mutual excitation in neural populations in human and animal brains create a mesoscopic order parameter that is recorded in brain waves (electroencephalogram, EEG). Spatially and spectrally distributed oscillations are imposed on the background activity by inhibitory feedback in the gamma range (30–80 Hz). Beats recur at theta rates (3–7 Hz), at which the order parameter transiently approaches zero and microscopic activity becomes disordered. After these null spikes, the order parameter resurges and initiates a frame bearing a mesoscopic spatial pattern of gamma amplitude modulation that governs the microscopic activity, and that is correlated with behavior. The brain waves also reveal a spatial pattern of phase modulation in the form of a cone. Using the formalism of the dissipative many-body model of brain, we describe the null spike as a singularity, the following amplitude pattern as a ground state, and the phase cone as the manifestation of a stabilizing vortex.