Corticocortical coherence is referred to the synchrony in the neural activity of different cortical brain areas. The neural activities are picked up by electrophysiological recordings from the brain (e.g.
EEG
Electroencephalography (EEG) is a method to record an electrogram of the spontaneous electrical activity of the brain. The biosignals detected by EEG have been shown to represent the postsynaptic potentials of pyramidal neurons in the neocortex ...
,
MEG
Meg is a feminine given name, often a short form of Megatron, Megan, Megumi (Japanese), etc. It may refer to:
People
*Meg (singer), a Japanese singer
*Meg Cabot (born 1967), American author of romantic and paranormal fiction
*Meg Burton Cahill ( ...
,
ECoG, etc.). It is a method to study the brain's neural communication and function at rest or during functional tasks.
History and basics
Initial applications of spectral analysis for finding the relationship between the EEG recordings from different regions of scalp dates back to 1960's. Corticocortical coherence has since been extensively studied using
EEG
Electroencephalography (EEG) is a method to record an electrogram of the spontaneous electrical activity of the brain. The biosignals detected by EEG have been shown to represent the postsynaptic potentials of pyramidal neurons in the neocortex ...
and
MEG
Meg is a feminine given name, often a short form of Megatron, Megan, Megumi (Japanese), etc. It may refer to:
People
*Meg (singer), a Japanese singer
*Meg Cabot (born 1967), American author of romantic and paranormal fiction
*Meg Burton Cahill ( ...
recording for potential diagnostic applications and beyond.
The exact origins of corticocortical coherence are under active investigation. While the consensus suggests that the functional neural communication between distinct brain sources leads to synchronous activity in those regions (possibly connected by neural tracts, in either direct or indirect way), an alternative explanation emphasises on single focal oscillations that occur at single brain sources that eventually appear connected or synchronous in different scalp or brain source regions.
Corticocortical coherence has been of special interest in delta, theta, alpha, beta and gamma frequency bands (commonly used for
EEG
Electroencephalography (EEG) is a method to record an electrogram of the spontaneous electrical activity of the brain. The biosignals detected by EEG have been shown to represent the postsynaptic potentials of pyramidal neurons in the neocortex ...
studies).
Methods, mathematics and statistics
Cortico-cortical coherence is commonly studied using bipolar channels of EEG recordings, as well as unipolar channels of EEG or MEG signals; however, unipolar channels are usually used to estimate the brain sources and their connectivity, using electrical source imaging and connectivity analysis.
A classic and commonly used approach to assess the synchrony between neural signals is to use
Coherence
Coherence, coherency, or coherent may refer to the following:
Physics
* Coherence (physics), an ideal property of waves that enables stationary (i.e. temporally and spatially constant) interference
* Coherence (units of measurement), a deriv ...
.
Statistical significance of coherence is found as function of number of data segments with assumption of the signals' normal distribution.
[Halliday, D. M., & Rosenberg, J. R. (1999). Time and frequency domain analysis of spike train and time series data. In Modern techniques in neuroscience research (pp. 503–543). Springer. Retrieved from http://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-58552-4_18] Alternatively non-parametric techniques such as bootstrapping can be used.
See also
*
Intermuscular coherence Intermuscular Coherence is a measure to quantify correlations between the activity of two muscles, which is often assessed using electromyography. The correlations in muscle activity are quantified in frequency domain, and therefore referred to as ...
*
Corticomuscular coherence Corticomuscular Coherence relates to the synchrony in the neural activity of brain's cortical areas and muscle. The neural activities are picked up by electrophysiological recordings from the brain (e.g. EEG, MEG, ECoG, etc.) and muscle ( EMG). It ...
External links
Neurspec Toolbox for MATLAB
References
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Neuroscience