Functional Connectivity Analysis by Trial in a Working Memory Task

Abstract

To identify neuroanatomical abnormalities in the brains of people with psychosis, schizophrenia or children experiencing PLEs have been detected atypical activity levels in specific brain regions using fMRI or event-related potentials analysis. Both of these approaches suffer from drawbacks. In this study using EEG signals, the method implemented surpasses the limitations of both. The proposed method combines advanced signal processing, in time and frequency domain, with graph analysis and evaluates the inference across subjects. The first part of the procedure consists of a data preparation phase and of a data analysis phase, based on functional connectivity evaluation using the peak correlation methods. The second part takes into account parametric and topological aspects of the brain network, extracted by the brain connectivity and the graph analysis, obtaining robust and clinically relevant information.