An approach to physiologically meaningful distributed inverse solutions to the neuro-electromagnetic inverse problem

Abstract

The problem of determining the generators of brain electromagnetic activity has no unique solution. The only way to deal this problem, sometimes denominated "the problem of the non-uniqueness", is to restrict the set of possible solutions by using either physiological or mathematical constraints or a combination of both. The main purpose of this work is to propose a method for obtaining a unique distributed solution to the neuro-electromagnetic inverse problem by considering physiological constraints regarding the spatio temporal distribution of the generators. We will focus in discussing distributed inverse solutions (given in terms of the current density vector) which are general enough to include the concentrated inverse solution. Aspects related to the uniqueness of the new inverse solution proposed are discussed that suggest that this solution warrants further development. We consider as the main merit of this proposal the possibility of including new terms extracted from the new developments in neurophysiology.