Dear all
The first slide in the attached Powerpoint presentation was generated by
Piers for a paper based on data gathered at Aston. The stimuli were
written words. The figure shows the time-frequency plots for virtual
electrodes inserted at 4 different sites in the brain, with power
represented in the colour. There are 3 plots for each site showing evoked
power (left), total power (middle) and induced power (right). These
figures were generated in Fieldtrip where the time-frequency plots are
computed with respect to a baseline. Piers has added a couple of slides
which shows the steps in Fieldtrip that he used.
The left middle occipital gyrus (MOGl) site is closest to primary visual
cortex where the words first arrive. You will notice that the power there
is mostly evoked and that the induced component is small. The same is
true at the left mid fusiform gyrus (= the 'visual word form area').
Contrast that with the left and right inferior frontal gyri (IFGl), which
are further from primary visual cortex. There is some evoked power at
those sites, but most of the total power is induced.
It seems to me that the lessons could be:
1. If you plot total power, do not automatically assume that it will be
mostly induced. There are conditions and sites (close to primary sensory
cortex?) where the total power may be mostly evoked.
2. Do not plot total power and call it "induced". It may not be.
3. It could be that the more synapses a response passes through, the more
the power shifts from evoked to induced. That could be because different
stimuli complete the passage from early to late sites at different rates
in different participants with the result that the response gets jittered
in time, disappears in the evoked averaging, and appears instead in the
induced response. Induced responses may not always be qualitatively
different from from evoked responses - they may simply be smeared out in
time. (Note: This is not to deny the existence of induced responses which
are NOT the result of stereotypical waveforms + jitter, but rather
represents increased power in several oscillators within a given time
period.)
4. It would be a good thing if the VE tools we develop in YNiC for
generating time-frequency plots were capable of distinguishing evoked from
induced responses and plotting them separately.
Please discuss in rare pre-Christmas moments of sobriety.
Andy
Show replies by date