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Is there a ubiquitous spectrolaminar motif of local field potential power across primate neocortex?

Nature Neuroscience volume 29, pages 279–283 (2026)Cite this article

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Matters Arising to this article was published on 12 December 2025

The Original Article was published on 18 January 2024

arising from D. Mendoza-Halliday et al. Nature Neuroscience https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-023-01554-7 (2024)

Mendoza-Halliday et al.1 advocate for a local field potential (LFP)-based approach to functional identification of cortical layers during ‘laminar’ (simultaneous recordings from all cortical layers) multielectrode recordings in nonhuman primates. They describe a ‘ubiquitous spectrolaminar motif’ in the primate neocortex: (1) 75–150 Hz power peaks in the supragranular layers, (2) 10–19 Hz power peaks in the infragranular layers and (3) the crossing point of their laminar power gradients identifies layer 4 (L4). Identification of L4 is critical in general, but especially for Mendoza-Halliday et al.1 as the ‘motif’ discovery is couched within a framework whose central hypothesis is that gamma activity originates in the supragranular layers and reflects feedforward activity, while alpha-beta activity originates in the infragranular layers and reflects feedback activity. In an impressive scientific effort, the authors1 analyzed laminar data from 14 cortical areas in two prior macaque studies and compared them to marmoset, mouse and human data to further bolster the canonical nature of the motif. Identification of such canonical principles of brain operation is clearly a topic of broad scientific interest. Similarly, a reliable online method for L4 identification would be of broad scientific value for the rapidly increasing use of laminar recordings using numerous evolving technologies.

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Fig. 1: FLIP analysis in auditory and visual cortices.
Fig. 2: vFLIP analysis.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge funding from R01DC012947, R01DC019979, P50MH109429, NIH R01NS128924-01, NIH R01MH134118-01, NIH R01MH132225 and ARL Cooperative Agreement W911NF2220143. We thank R. T. Knight, C. Honey and Y. Kajikawa for critical comments on an earlier version of the manuscript. We also acknowledge H. Evrard, A. Falchier and J. Smiley for helpful comments and advice on histological methodology.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Biomedical Imaging and Neuromodulation, Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research, Orangeburg, NY, USA

    Chase A. Mackey, Samuel Neymotin, Salvador Dura-Bernal, Annamaria Barczak, Monica N. O’Connell & Charles E. Schroeder

  2. Department of Neuroscience, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA

    Katharina Duecker & Stephanie R. Jones

  3. Department Psychiatry, NYU Grossman School of Medicine, New York, NY, USA

    Samuel Neymotin

  4. Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, State University of New York (SUNY) Downstate Health Sciences University, Brooklyn, NY, USA

    Salvador Dura-Bernal

  5. Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Saskia Haegens

  6. Division of Systems Neuroscience, New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York, NY, USA

    Saskia Haegens

  7. Department of Psychiatry, New York University School of Medicine, New York, NY, USA

    Monica N. O’Connell

  8. Center for Neurorestoration and Neurotechnology, Providence VA Medical Center, Providence, RI, USA

    Stephanie R. Jones

  9. J. Crayton Pruitt Family Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA

    Mingzhou Ding

  10. Center for Neuroscience at the University of Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

    Avniel S. Ghuman

  11. Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition, University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

    Avniel S. Ghuman

  12. Department of Neurological Surgery, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

    Avniel S. Ghuman

  13. Departments of Psychiatry and Neurology, Columbia University Medical Center, New York, NY, USA

    Charles E. Schroeder

Authors
  1. Chase A. Mackey
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  2. Katharina Duecker
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  8. Stephanie R. Jones
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  10. Avniel S. Ghuman
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  11. Charles E. Schroeder
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Contributions

A.B., M.N.O. and C.E.S. contributed the auditory and visual cortex datasets. C.A.M., K.D., A.B., M.N.O., A.S.G., C.E.S., S.D.-B., S.N., S.H., S.R.J. and M.D. conceptualized the analysis. C.A.M., K.D. and A.S.G. conducted primary data analyses. C.A.M., K.D., C.E.S., A.S.G., S.N. and S.D.-B. drafted the manuscript. All authors contributed to the conceptualization and editing of the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Chase A. Mackey.

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Ethics statement

All data were collected using procedures approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee of the Nathan S. Kline Institute, and followed the guidelines set forth by the NKI IACUC and USDA.

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

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Nature Neuroscience thanks Zachary Davis and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Figs. 1–4, Supplementary Table 1 and accompanying descriptive text.

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Mackey, C.A., Duecker, K., Neymotin, S. et al. Is there a ubiquitous spectrolaminar motif of local field potential power across primate neocortex?. Nat Neurosci 29, 279–283 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-025-02167-y

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