Statistical mechanics of neocortical interactions: EEG eigenfunctions of short-term memory

Abstract

This paper focuses on how bottom-up neocortical models can be developed into eigenfunction expansions of probability distributions appropriate to describe short-term memory in the context of scalp EEG. The mathematics of eigenfunctions are similar to the top-down eigenfunctions developed by Nunez, albeit they have different physical manifestations. The bottom-up eigenfunctions are at the local mesocolumnar scale, whereas the top-down eigenfunctions are at the global regional scale. However, as described in several joint papers, our approaches have regions of substantial overlap, and future studies may expand top-down eigenfunctions into the bottom-up eigenfunctions, yielding a model of scalp EEG that is ultimately expressed in terms of columnar states of neocortical processing of attention and short-term memory.