Human Brain EEG Fields: Micro-states and Their Functional Significance

Human behavior in response to received information depends on the person’s general condition, and in particular on the brain functional state which existed at the moment when the information arrived; likewise, “spontaneous” behavior (volontary or automatic acts) depends on the state during which the act is executed. Not only overt behavior, but also subjective experiences such as perceptions, thoughts, ideas and emotions vary with the momentarily present functional state? The existing state permits and constrains the different brain functions. Well-known examples are the different speeds and reliabilities of motor reactions to tone stimuli in wakefulness and sleep, and the different types of thoughts and spontaneous ideas associated with these states: abstract and reality-referred thoughts vs associative, reality-remote concatenations of thoughts and dream-like mentations (see /1/); related differences are observed during wakefulness between adults and children. Minor but distinct changes of short-lasting functional states have also been studied extensively. The classical “fluctuations of attention” /2/ actually refer to spontaneous variations of perceptual threshold which occur in the range of seconds.

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