Analysis of Speech Imagery using Functional and Effective EEG based Brain Connectivity Parameters

Author(s):  
Sandhya Chengaiyan ◽  
Kavitha Anandhan

Speech imagery is a form of mental imagery which refers to the activity of talking to oneself in silence. In this paper, EEG coherence, a functional connectivity parameter is calculated to analyze the concurrence of the different regions of the brain and Effective connectivity parameters such as Partial Directed Coherence (PDC), Directed Transfer Function (DTF) and Information theory based parameter Transfer Entropy (TE) are estimated to find the direction and strength of the connectivity patterns of the given speech imagery task. It has been observed from the results that by using functional and effective connectivity parameters the left frontal lobe electrodes was found to be high during speech production and left temporal lobe electrodes was found to be high while imagining the word silently in the brain due to the proximity of the electrodes to the Broca's and Wernicke's area respectively. The results suggest that the proposed methodology is a promising non-invasive approach to study directional connectivity in the brain between mutually interconnected neural populations.

2015 ◽  
Vol 25 (05) ◽  
pp. 1550006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dimitris Kugiumtzis ◽  
Vasilios K. Kimiskidis

Background: Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) can have inhibitory effects on epileptiform discharges (EDs) of patients with focal seizures. However, the brain connectivity before, during and after EDs, with or without the administration of TMS, has not been extensively explored. Objective: To investigate the brain network of effective connectivity during ED with and without TMS in patients with focal seizures. Methods: For the effective connectivity a direct causality measure is applied termed partial mutual information from mixed embedding (PMIME). TMS-EEG data from two patients with focal seizures were analyzed. Each EEG record contained a number of EDs in the majority of which TMS was administered over the epileptic focus. As a control condition, sham stimulation over the epileptogenic zone or real TMS at a distance from the epileptic focus was also performed. The change in brain connectivity structure was investigated from the causal networks formed at each sliding window. Conclusion: The PMIME could detect distinct changes in the network structure before, within, and after ED. The administration of real TMS over the epileptic focus, in contrast to sham stimulation, terminated the ED prematurely in a node-specific manner and regained the network structure as if it would have terminated spontaneously.


2021 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter A. Robinson ◽  
James A. Henderson ◽  
Natasha C. Gabay ◽  
Kevin M. Aquino ◽  
Tara Babaie-Janvier ◽  
...  

Spectral analysis based on neural field theory is used to analyze dynamic connectivity via methods based on the physical eigenmodes that are the building blocks of brain dynamics. These approaches integrate over space instead of averaging over time and thereby greatly reduce or remove the temporal averaging effects, windowing artifacts, and noise at fine spatial scales that have bedeviled the analysis of dynamical functional connectivity (FC). The dependences of FC on dynamics at various timescales, and on windowing, are clarified and the results are demonstrated on simple test cases, demonstrating how modes provide directly interpretable insights that can be related to brain structure and function. It is shown that FC is dynamic even when the brain structure and effective connectivity are fixed, and that the observed patterns of FC are dominated by relatively few eigenmodes. Common artifacts introduced by statistical analyses that do not incorporate the physical nature of the brain are discussed and it is shown that these are avoided by spectral analysis using eigenmodes. Unlike most published artificially discretized “resting state networks” and other statistically-derived patterns, eigenmodes overlap, with every mode extending across the whole brain and every region participating in every mode—just like the vibrations that give rise to notes of a musical instrument. Despite this, modes are independent and do not interact in the linear limit. It is argued that for many purposes the intrinsic limitations of covariance-based FC instead favor the alternative of tracking eigenmode coefficients vs. time, which provide a compact representation that is directly related to biophysical brain dynamics.


2020 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-32
Author(s):  
Mehdi Rajabioun ◽  
Ali Motie Nasrabadi ◽  
Mohammad Bagher Shamsollahi ◽  
Robert Coben

AbstractBrain connectivity estimation is a useful method to study brain functions and diagnose neuroscience disorders. Effective connectivity is a subdivision of brain connectivity which discusses the causal relationship between different parts of the brain. In this study, a dual Kalman-based method is used for effective connectivity estimation. Because of connectivity changes in autism, the method is applied to autistic signals for effective connectivity estimation. For method validation, the dual Kalman based method is compared with other connectivity estimation methods by estimation error and the dual Kalman-based method gives acceptable results with less estimation errors. Then, connectivities between active brain regions of autistic and normal children in the resting state are estimated and compared. In this simulation, the brain is divided into eight regions and the connectivity between regions and within them is calculated. It can be concluded from the results that in the resting state condition the effective connectivity of active regions is decreased between regions and is increased within each region in autistic children. In another result, by averaging the connectivity between the extracted active sources of each region, the connectivity between the left and right of the central part is more than that in other regions and the connectivity in the occipital part is less than that in others.


2013 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Husnaini Azmy ◽  
Norlaili Mat Safri

The aim of this study is to detect the brain activation on scalp by Electroencephalogram (EEG) task–based for brain computer interface (BCI) using wirelessly control robot. EEG was measured in 8 normal subjects for control and task conditions. The objective is to determine one scalp location which will give signals that can be used to control the wireless robot using BCI and EEG, using non invasive and without subject training. In control condition subjects were ask to relax but in task condition, subjects were asked to imagine a star rotating clockwise at position 45 degrees direction pointed by the wireless robot where at this angle the target is located. At position 0 and 90 degree angle subjects were asked to relax since there is no target on that direction. Using EEG spectral power analysis and normalization, the optimum location for this task has been detected at position F8 which is in frontal cortex area and the rhythm happened at alpha frequency band. At this position, the signals from the brain should be able to drive the robot to the required direction by giving correct and accurate signals to robot moving towards target.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chan Hee Kim ◽  
Jaeho Seol ◽  
Seung-Hyun Jin ◽  
June Sic Kim ◽  
Youn Kim ◽  
...  

AbstractIn real music, the original melody may appear intact, with little elaboration only, or significantly modified. Since a melody is most easily perceived in music, hearing significantly modified melody may change a brain connectivity. Mozart KV 265 is comprised of an original melody of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” with its significant variations. We studied whether effective connectivity changes with significantly modified melody, between bilateral inferior frontal gyri (IFGs) and Heschl’s gyri (HGs) using magnetoencephalography (MEG). Among the 12 connectivities, the connectivity from the left IFG to the right HG was consistently increased with significantly modified melody compared to the original melody in 2 separate sets of the same rhythmic pattern with different melody (p = 0.005 and 0.034, Bonferroni corrected). Our findings show that the modification of an original melody in a real music changes the brain connectivity.Significant statementsOur data show how a regional connectivity changes when the original melody is intact or significantly modified, consistent in two different sets of variations with the same rhythmic patterns but with the different melody pattern. The present study employed real music of Mozart’s Variation KV 265 as musical stimuli, dissected musical elements in each variation, and devised the two comparable sets of variation, which have the same rhythmic pattern but different melody. We exploited naturalistic conditions in real music instead of devising artificial conditions, and successfully demonstrated how variations of melody in real music change a regional connectivity in the brain.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alessandro Crimi

The relationship between structure and function is of interest in many research fields involving the study of complex biological processes. In neuroscience in particular, the fusion of structural and functional data can help to understand the underlying principles of the operational networks in the brain. To address this issue, this paper proposes a constrained autoregressive model leading to a representation of effective connectivity that can be used to better understand how the structure modulates the function. Or simply, it can be used to find novel biomarkers characterizing groups of subjects. In practice, an initial structural connectivity representation is re-weighted to explain the functional co-activations. This is obtained by minimizing the reconstruction error of an autoregressive model constrained by the structural connectivity prior. The model has been designed to also include indirect connections, allowing to split direct and indirect components in the functional connectivity, and it can be used with raw and deconvoluted BOLD signal.The derived representation of dependencies was compared to the well known dynamic causal model, giving results closer to known ground-truth. Further evaluation of the proposed effective network was performed on two typical tasks. In a first experiment the direct functional dependencies were tested on a community detection problem, where the brain was partitioned using the effective networks across multiple subjects. In a second experiment the model was validated in a case-control task, which aimed at differentiating healthy subjects from individuals with autism spectrum disorder. Results showed that using effective connectivity leads to clusters better describing the functional interactions in the community detection task, while maintaining the original structural organization, and obtaining a better discrimination in the case-control classification task.


2020 ◽  
Vol 117 (34) ◽  
pp. 20868-20873 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arseny A. Sokolov ◽  
Peter Zeidman ◽  
Michael Erb ◽  
Frank E. Pollick ◽  
Andreas J. Fallgatter ◽  
...  

Adaptive social behavior and mental well-being depend on not only recognizing emotional expressions but also, inferring the absence of emotion. While the neurobiology underwriting the perception of emotions is well studied, the mechanisms for detecting a lack of emotional content in social signals remain largely unknown. Here, using cutting-edge analyses of effective brain connectivity, we uncover the brain networks differentiating neutral and emotional body language. The data indicate greater activation of the right amygdala and midline cerebellar vermis to nonemotional as opposed to emotional body language. Most important, the effective connectivity between the amygdala and insula predicts people’s ability to recognize the absence of emotion. These conclusions extend substantially current concepts of emotion perception by suggesting engagement of limbic effective connectivity in recognizing the lack of emotion in body language reading. Furthermore, the outcome may advance the understanding of overly emotional interpretation of social signals in depression or schizophrenia by providing the missing link between body language reading and limbic pathways. The study thus opens an avenue for multidisciplinary research on social cognition and the underlying cerebrocerebellar networks, ranging from animal models to patients with neuropsychiatric conditions.


1999 ◽  
Vol 354 (1387) ◽  
pp. 1229-1238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alvaro Pascual-Leone

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) provides a non-invasive method of induction of a focal current in the brain and transient modulation of the function of the targeted cortex. Despite limited understanding about focality and mechanisms of action, TMS provides a unique opportunity of studying brain-behaviour relations in normal humans. TMS can enhance the results of other neuroimaging techniques by establishing the causal link between brain activity and task performance, and by exploring functional brain connectivity.


2017 ◽  
Vol 27 (07) ◽  
pp. 1750037 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dimitris Kugiumtzis ◽  
Christos Koutlis ◽  
Alkiviadis Tsimpiris ◽  
Vasilios K. Kimiskidis

Objective: In patients with Genetic Generalized Epilepsy (GGE), transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) can induce epileptiform discharges (EDs) of varying duration. We hypothesized that (a) the ED duration is determined by the dynamic states of critical network nodes (brain areas) at the early post-TMS period, and (b) brain connectivity changes before, during and after the ED, as well as within the ED. Methods: EEG recordings from two GGE patients were analyzed. For hypothesis (a), the characteristics of the brain dynamics at the early ED stage are measured with univariate and multivariate EEG measures and the dependence of the ED duration on these measures is evaluated. For hypothesis (b), effective connectivity measures are combined with network indices so as to quantify the brain network characteristics and identify changes in brain connectivity. Results: A number of measures combined with specific channels computed on the first EEG segment post-TMS correlate with the ED duration. In addition, brain connectivity is altered from pre-ED to ED and post-ED and statistically significant changes were also detected across stages within the ED. Conclusion: ED duration is not purely stochastic, but depends on the dynamics of the post-TMS brain state. The brain network dynamics is significantly altered in the course of EDs.


Author(s):  
Zhaoyue Shi ◽  
Khue Tran ◽  
Christof Karmonik ◽  
Timothy Boone ◽  
Rose Khavari

Abstract Background Several studies have reported brain activations and functional connectivity (FC) during micturition using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and concurrent urodynamics (UDS) testing. However, due to the invasive nature of UDS procedure, non-invasive resting-state fMRI is being explored as a potential alternative. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the feasibility of utilizing resting states as a non-invasive alternative for investigating the bladder-related networks in the brain. Methods We quantitatively compared FC in brain regions belonging to the bladder-related network during the following states: ‘strong desire to void’, ‘voiding initiation (or attempt at voiding initiation)’, and ‘voiding (or continued attempt of voiding)’ with FC during rest in nine multiple sclerosis women with voiding dysfunction using fMRI data acquired at 7 T and 3 T. Results The inter-subject correlation analysis showed that voiding (or continued attempt of voiding) is achieved through similar network connections in all subjects. The task-based bladder-related network closely resembles the resting-state intrinsic network only during voiding (or continued attempt of voiding) process but not at other states. Conclusion Resting states fMRI can be potentially utilized to accurately reflect the voiding (or continued attempt of voiding) network. Concurrent UDS testing is still necessary for studying the effects of strong desire to void and initiation of voiding (or attempt at initiation of voiding).


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