Abstract: Neocortical local field potentials have shown that gamma oscillations occur spontaneously during slow-wave sleep (SWS). At the macroscopic EEG level in the human brain, no evidences were reported so far. In this study, by using simultaneous scalp and intracranial EEG recordings in 20 epileptic subjects, we examined gamma oscillations in cerebral cortex during SWS. We report that gamma oscillations in low (30-50 Hz) and high (60-120 Hz) frequency bands recurrently emerged in all investigated regions and their amplitudes coincided with specific phases of the cortical slow wave. In most of the cases, multiple oscillatory bursts in different frequency bands from 30 to 120 Hz were correlated with positive peaks of scalp slow waves (“IN-phase'' pattern), confirming previous animal findings. In addition, we report another gamma pattern that appears preferentially during the negative phase of the slow wave (”ANTI-phase'' pattern). This new pattern presented dominant peaks in the high gamma range and was preferentially expressed in the temporal cortex. Finally, we found that the spatial coherence between cortical sites exhibiting gamma activities was local and fell off quickly when computed between distant sites. Overall, these results provide the first human evidences that gamma oscillations can be observed in macroscopic EEG recordings during sleep. They support the concept that these high-frequency activities might be associated with phasic increases of neural activity during slow oscillations. Such patterned activity in the sleeping brain could play a role in off-line processing of cortical networks.

Abstract: We propose to install a storage ring at an ISOL-type radioactive beam facility for the first time. Specifically, we intend to setup the heavy-ion, low-energy ring TSR at the HIE-ISOLDE facility in CERN, Geneva. Such a facility will provide a capability for experiments with stored secondary beams that is unique in the world. The envisaged physics programme is rich and varied, spanning from investigations of nuclear ground-state properties and reaction studies of astrophysical relevance, to investigations with highly-charged ions and pure isomeric beams. The TSR might also be employed for removal of isobaric contaminants from stored ion beams and for systematic studies within the neutrino beam programme. In addition to experiments performed using beams recirculating within the ring, cooled beams can also be extracted and exploited by external spectrometers for high-precision measurements. The existing TSR, which is presently in operation at the Max-Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, is well-suited and can be employed for this purpose. The physics cases as well as technical details of the existing ring facility and of the beam and infrastructure requirements at HIE-ISOLDE are discussed in the present technical design report.

Abstract: After the completion of the experimental program at SIS18 the HADES setup will migrate to FAIR, where it will deliver high-quality data for heavy-ion collisions in an unexplored energy range of up to 8 A GeV. In this contribution, we briefly present the physics case, relevant detector characteristics and discuss the recently completed upgrade of HADES.