Method for Spatial Overlap Estimation of Electroencephalography and Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Responses

Background Simultaneous functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG) measurements may represent activity from partially divergent neural sources, but this factor is seldom modeled in fMRI-EEG data integration. New method This paper proposes an approach to estimate the spatial overlap between sources of activity measured simultaneously with fMRI and EEG. Following the extraction of task-related activity, the key steps include, 1) distributed source reconstruction of the task-related ERP activity (ERP source model), 2) transformation of fMRI activity to the ERP spatial scale by forward modelling of the scalp potential field distribution and backward source reconstruction (fMRI source simulation), and 3) optimization of fMRI and ERP thresholds to maximize spatial overlap without a priori constraints of coupling (overlap calculation). Results FMRI and ERP responses were recorded simultaneously in 15 subjects performing an auditory oddball task. A high degree of spatial overlap between sources of fMRI and ERP responses (in 9 or more of 15 subjects) was found specifically within temporoparietal areas associated with the task. Areas of non-overlap in fMRI and ERP sources were relatively small and inconsistent across subjects. Comparison with existing method The ERP and fMRI sources estimated with solely jICA overlapped in just 4 of 15 subjects, and strictly in the parietal cortex. Conclusion The study demonstrates that the new fMRI-ERP spatial overlap estimation method provides greater spatiotemporal detail of the cortical dynamics than solely jICA. As such, we propose that it is a superior method for the integration of fMRI and EEG to study brain function

Spatial Filtering Pipeline Evaluation of Cortically Coupled Computer Vision System for Rapid Serial Visual Presentation

Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) is a paradigm that supports the application of cortically coupled computer vision to rapid image search. In RSVP, images are presented to participants in a rapid serial sequence which can evoke Event-related Potentials (ERPs) detectable in their Electroencephalogram (EEG). The contemporary approach to this problem involves supervised spatial filtering techniques which are applied for the purposes of enhancing the discriminative information in the EEG data. In this paper we make two primary contributions to that field: 1) We propose a novel spatial filtering method which we call the Multiple Time Window LDA Beamformer (MTWLB) method; 2) we provide a comprehensive comparison of nine spatial filtering pipelines using three spatial filtering schemes namely, MTWLB, xDAWN, Common Spatial Pattern (CSP) and three linear classification methods Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA), Bayesian Linear Regression (BLR) and Logistic Regression (LR). Three pipelines without spatial filtering are used as baseline comparison. The Area Under Curve (AUC) is used as an evaluation metric in this paper. The results reveal that MTWLB and xDAWN spatial filtering techniques enhance the classification performance of the pipeline but CSP does not. The results also support the conclusion that LR can be effective for RSVP based BCI if discriminative features are available

A new method to detect event-related potentials based on Pearson\u2019s correlation

Event-related potentials (ERPs) are widely used in brain-computer interface applications and in neuroscience. Normal EEG activity is rich in background noise, and therefore, in order to detect ERPs, it is usually necessary to take the average from multiple trials to reduce the effects of this noise. The noise produced by EEG activity itself is not correlated with the ERP waveform and so, by calculating the average, the noise is decreased by a factor inversely proportional to the square root of N, where N is the number of averaged epochs. This is the easiest strategy currently used to detect ERPs, which is based on calculating the average of all ERP\u2019s waveform, these waveforms being time- and phase-locked. In this paper, a new method called GW6 is proposed, which calculates the ERP using a mathematical method based only on Pearson\u2019s correlation. The result is a graph with the same time resolution as the classical ERP and which shows only positive peaks representing the increase\u2014in consonance with the stimuli\u2014in EEG signal correlation over all channels. This new method is also useful for selectively identifying and highlighting some hidden components of the ERP response that are not phase-locked, and that are usually hidden in the standard and simple method based on the averaging of all the epochs. These hidden components seem to be caused by variations (between each successive stimulus) of the ERP\u2019s inherent phase latency period (jitter), although the same stimulus across all EEG channels produces a reasonably constant phase. For this reason, this new method could be very helpful to investigate these hidden components of the ERP response and to develop applications for scientific and medical purposes. Moreover, this new method is more resistant to EEG artifacts than the standard calculations of the average and could be very useful in research and neurology. The method we are proposing can be directly used in the form of a process written in the well-known Matlab programming language and can be easily and quickly written in any other software language

Characterization of spatio-temporal epidural event-related potentials for mouse models of psychiatric disorders.

Distinctive features in sensory event-related potentials (ERPs) are endophenotypic biomarkers of psychiatric disorders, widely studied using electroencephalographic (EEG) methods in humans and model animals. Despite the popularity and unique significance of the mouse as a model species in basic research, existing EEG methods applicable to mice are far less powerful than those available for humans and large animals. We developed a new method for multi-channel epidural ERP characterization in behaving mice with high precision, reliability and convenience and report an application to time-domain ERP feature characterization of the Sp4 hypomorphic mouse model for schizophrenia. Compared to previous methods, our spatio-temporal ERP measurement robustly improved the resolving power of key signatures characteristic of the disease model. The high performance and low cost of this technique makes it suitable for high-throughput behavioral and pharmacological studies

Brain-Switches for Asynchronous Brain−Computer Interfaces: A Systematic Review

A brain–computer interface (BCI) has been extensively studied to develop a novel communication system for disabled people using their brain activities. An asynchronous BCI system is more realistic and practical than a synchronous BCI system, in that, BCI commands can be generated whenever the user wants. However, the relatively low performance of an asynchronous BCI system is problematic because redundant BCI commands are required to correct false-positive operations. To significantly reduce the number of false-positive operations of an asynchronous BCI system, a two-step approach has been proposed using a brain-switch that first determines whether the user wants to use an asynchronous BCI system before the operation of the asynchronous BCI system. This study presents a systematic review of the state-of-the-art brain-switch techniques and future research directions. To this end, we reviewed brain-switch research articles published from 2000 to 2019 in terms of their (a) neuroimaging modality, (b) paradigm, (c) operation algorithm, and (d) performance

Generalized Sparse Discriminant Analysis for Event-Related Potential Classification

A brain computer interface (BCI) is a system which provides direct communication between the mind of a person and the outside world by using only brain activity (EEG). The event-related potential (ERP)-based BCI problem consists of a binary pattern recognition. Linear discriminant analysis (LDA) is widely used to solve this type of classification problems, but it fails when the number of features is large relative to the number of observations. In this work we propose a penalized version of the sparse discriminant analysis (SDA), called generalized sparse discriminant analysis (GSDA), for binary classification. This method inherits both the discriminative feature selection and classification properties of SDA and it also improves SDA performance through the addition of Kullback-Leibler class discrepancy information. The GSDA method is designed to automatically select the optimal regularization parameters. Numerical experiments with two real ERP-EEG datasets show that, on one hand, GSDA outperforms standard SDA in the sense of classification performance, sparsity and required computing time, and, on the other hand, it also yields better overall performances, compared to well-known ERP classification algorithms, for single-trial ERP classification when insufficient training samples are available. Hence, GSDA constitute a potential useful method for reducing the calibration times in ERP-based BCI systems.Fil: Peterson, Victoria. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Santa Fe. Instituto de Investigación en Señales, Sistemas e Inteligencia Computacional. Universidad Nacional del Litoral. Facultad de Ingeniería y Ciencias Hídricas. Instituto de Investigación en Señales, Sistemas e Inteligencia Computacional; ArgentinaFil: Rufiner, Hugo Leonardo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Santa Fe. Instituto de Investigación en Señales, Sistemas e Inteligencia Computacional. Universidad Nacional del Litoral. Facultad de Ingeniería y Ciencias Hídricas. Instituto de Investigación en Señales, Sistemas e Inteligencia Computacional; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Entre Ríos. Facultad de Ingeniería; ArgentinaFil: Spies, Ruben Daniel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Santa Fe. Instituto de Matemática Aplicada del Litoral. Universidad Nacional del Litoral. Instituto de Matemática Aplicada del Litoral; Argentina. Universidad Nacional del Litoral. Facultad de Ingeniería Química; Argentin