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

Abstract 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).