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Functional connectivity of alpha-oscillations varies across task conditions.

Poster Session B - Sunday, March 8, 2026, 8:00 – 10:00 am PDT, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballroom

A. Lenartowicz¹ (), S. Esfand², K. Null², T. Kelley¹, T.V. Román-López¹, F.Y. Chang¹, A. Friedman-Jha¹, H.V. Truong¹, J.P. Diaz-Fong³, A. Dillon¹, S.K. Loo¹; ¹Department of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences, UCLA, ²Department of Psychology, UCLA, ³Institute of Medical Sciences, University of Toronto

The proposed role of alpha-range (8-12Hz) oscillations in cognition includes gating for selective attention and cognitive control. Here we measured within-subject functional connectivity (FC) during modulations of alpha power across task conditions, to test if they can be mapped to an underlying network. We recorded, concurrently, EEG and fMRI signals while participants (n=176) performed a spatial working memory (SWM) task, a passive viewing task, and resting eyes open/closed (EO/EC) conditions. Using psychophysiological interaction modeling, we identified alpha-related FC of lateral and superior occipital regions of interest (ROIs) during encoding and probe conditions of the SWM task, and during passive and EO/EC conditions. Across ROIs, alpha-power decreases during stimulus processing were associated with FC with visual and dorsal attention networks, and control network A, as well as decreased FC with default mode network B for superior ROIs. However, the FC differed among ROIs, stronger for superior over lateral ROIs, and differed by stimulus type (encoding, probe, passive), with no significant FC associations during passive viewing despite significant alpha modulation. Furthermore, the FC patterns further differed during EO/EC conditions, involving greater FC with somatosensory networks, and contextualized by accompanying decreases in BOLD signal. In sum, the data show that alpha power modulations are associated with varying FC of visual cortex, most strongly superior, that is contextualized by task context. The data are consistent with a general role of alpha oscillations in modulating cortical activity, subject to varying driving factors.

Topic Area: EXECUTIVE PROCESSES: Working memory