Language

English

Publication Date

6-1-2026

Journal

PLOS Biology

DOI

10.1371/journal.pbio.3003818

PMID

42335005

PMCID

PMC13289887

PubMedCentral® Posted Date

6-23-2026

PubMedCentral® Full Text Version

Post-print

Abstract

Neural oscillations play a critical role in shaping neuronal firing patterns. While phase-locked neuronal firing ("phase tuning") has been extensively studied in animal models and human invasive recordings, much less is known about whether neurons show preferential firing at specific oscillatory frequencies, termed frequency tuning. Here, we employ human intracranial recordings across several brain regions including hippocampus, entorhinal cortex, anterior and posterior cingulate cortex, and orbitofrontal cortex to test the hypothesis that neurons exhibit frequency-specific firing. We analyzed 357 single units recorded simultaneously with local field potentials in 19 neurosurgical patients during awake resting. We estimated the instantaneous frequency of the LFP using adaptive spectral decomposition and assessed frequency tuning of each neuron while controlling for changes in firing rate unrelated to frequency changes. We found 27% of neurons exhibited increased or decreased firing within specific frequencies, most commonly within the low-frequency range (< 10 Hz). Neurons exhibiting frequency tuning were distinct from those displaying phase tuning, and both types of tuning were observed across multiple brain regions with no anatomical preference. Together, our results demonstrate that the instantaneous frequency of neural oscillations modulates neuronal firing which may serve as an additional mechanism for information processing in the human brain, opening new avenues for frequency-targeted neural stimulation.

Keywords

Humans, Neurons, Local Field Potential Measurement, Action Potentials, Female, Male, Adult, Brain, Hippocampus, Entorhinal Cortex

Published Open-Access

yes

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