Traveling cortical netwave

The brain creates a physical response out of signals in a cascade of streaming transformations. These transformations occur over networks, which have been described in anatomical, cyto-, myeloarchitectonic and functional research. The totality of these networks has been modelled and synthesised in phases across a continuous time-space-function axis, through ascending and descending hierarchical levels of association1-3 via changing coalitions of traveling netwaves4-6, where localised disorders might spread locally throughout the neighbouring tissues. This study quantified the model empirically with time-resolving functional magnetic resonance imaging of an imperative, visually-triggered, self-delayed, therefor double-event related response task. The resulting time series unfold in the range of slow cortical potentials the spatio-temporal integrity of a cortical pathway from the source of perception to the mouth of reaction in and out of known functional, anatomical and cytoarchitectonic networks. These pathways are consolidated in phase images described by a small vector matrix, which leads to massive simplification of cortical field theory and even to simple technical applications.