Learning-induced modulation of scale-free properties of brain activity measured with MEG

Previous studies have suggested that infraslow brain activity could play an important role in cognition. Its scale-free properties (coarsely described by its 1/f power spectrum) are indeed modulated between contrasted conscious states (sleep vs. awake). However, finer modulations remain to be investigated. Here, we make use of a robust multifractal analysis to investigate the group-level impact of perceptual learning (visual (V), or audiovisual (AV), N = 12 subjects in each group) on the source reconstructed scale-free activity recorded with magnetoencephalography (MEG) during rest and task. We first observed a significant decrease of self-similarity in evoked activity during the task after both trainings. More interestingly, only the most efficient training (AV) induced a decrease of self-similarity in spontaneous activity at rest whereas only V training induced an increase of multifractality in evoked activity.