Spatiotemporal analysis of the appearance of gamma-band Microstates in resting state MEG.

Abstract

Spatiotemporal analysis of EEG signal has revealed a rich set of methods to quantify neuronal activity using spatially global topographic templates, called Microstates. These methods complement more traditional spectral analysis, which uses band limited source data to determine defining differences in band power and peak characteristics. The high sampling rate and increased resistance to high frequency noise of MEG data offers an opportunity to explore the utility of spatiotemporal analysis over a wider spectrum than in EEG. In this work, we explore the utility of representing band limited MEG source data using established microstate techniques, especially in gamma frequency bands - a range yet unexplored using these techniques. We develop methods for gauging the goodness-of-fit achieved by resultant microstate templates and demonstrate sensor-level dispersion characteristics across wide-band signals as well as across signals filtered by canonical bands. These analyses reveal that, while high-frequency-band derived microstate templates are visually lawful, they fail to exhibit important explained variance and dispersion characteristics present in low- and full-band data necessary to meet the requirements of a microstate model.