Detecting millisecond-range coupling delays between brainwaves in terms of power correlations by magnetoencephalography.

BACKGROUND: The spatiotemporal coupling of brainwaves is commonly quantified using the amplitude or phase of signals measured by electro- or magnetoencephalography (EEG/MEG). To enhance the temporal resolution for coupling delays down to millisecond level, a new power correlation (PC) method is proposed and tested. NEW METHOD: The cross-correlations of any two brainwave powers at two locations are calculated sequentially through a measurement using the convolution theorem. For noise suppression, the cross-correlation series is moving-average filtered, preserving the millisecond resolution in the cross-correlations, but with reduced noise. The coupling delays are determined from the delays of the cross-correlation peaks. RESULTS: Simulations showed that the new method detects reliably power cross-correlations with millisecond accuracy. Moreover, in MEG measurements on three healthy volunteers, the method showed average alpha-alpha coupling delays of around 0-20 ms between the occipital areas of two hemispheres. Lower-frequency brainwaves vs. alpha waves tended to have a larger lag; higher-frequency waves vs. alpha waves showed delays with large deviations. COMPARISON WITH EXISTING METHODS: The use of signal power instead of its square root (amplitude) in the cross-correlations improves noise cancellation. Compared to signal phase, the signal power analysis time delays do not have periodic ambiguity. In addition, the novel method allows fast calculation of cross-correlations. CONCLUSIONS: The PC method conveys novel information about brainwave dynamics. The method may be extended from sensor-space to source-space analysis, and can be applied also for electroencephalography (EEG) and local field potentials (LFP).