What's new

May 2011

Brainstorm reference paper

Publication of a special issue of the journal Computational Intelligence and Neuroscience: "Academic Software Applications for Electromagnetic Brain Mapping Using MEG and EEG". The article describing Brainstorm will now be used as the its reference paper, please cite it in your publications (see How to cite Brainstorm).

Tadel F, Baillet S, Mosher JC, Pantazis D, Leahy RM, “Brainstorm: A User-Friendly Application for MEG/EEG Analysis,” Computational Intelligence and Neuroscience, vol. 2011, Article ID 879716, 13 pages, 2011. doi:10.1155/2011/879716 [ html, pdf ]

Database explorer

The file manager has been extended to support drag'n'drop and copy-paste operations. You can now move or copy easily the files from a condition or subject to another with the mouse, or using the keyboard shortcuts CTRL+C (copy), CTRL+X (cut) and CTRL+V (paste), or the File section in the popup menu.See tutorial: ?First steps.

Warping default anatomy

It is now possible to create pseudo-individual anatomies for the subjects for which you do not have any anatomical MRI. This operation is possible only if you have acquired some head points using a tracking system (eg. Polhemus Isotrak). The default anatomy (MNI/Colin27) is transformed to match those match those head points. See tutorial: Warping default anatomy.

Refine registration using head points

When importing MEG recordings, the registration between the sensors and the anatomy was based until now only on three points (nasion, left ear, right ear). This registration can be very imprecise in some cases. If you have digitized many head points with a tracking system before the recordings acquisition, the registration can be refined by trying to minimize the distance between the scalp surface and those digitized head points. This operation will be performed automatically for new datasets, but can also be called manually: right-click on channel file > MRI registration > Refine registration using head points. See tutorial: ?Refine registration using head points.

April 2011

BEM head model for EEG users

Great news for the EEG users, a new option is available for the computation of the head model: OpenMEEG BEM. This forward model uses a symmetric boundary element method and was developed by the French public research institute INRIA (website). It uses three realistic layers (scalp, inner skull, outer skull) that can be generated in Brainstorm. It provides for EEG a much better forward solution than the previous "3-shell sphere" model. EEG users should try to switch to this method quickly. It is not necessary for MEG users, as the "overlapping spheres" method gives very similar results but much faster. See tutorial: BEM head model.

Source estimation for the full brain volume

The head models computed with Brainstorm were until now limited to the cortex surface. This choice was following the assumption that most of the magnetic and electric activity that we record outside of the head comes from the cortex. It was a serious limitiation for users who wanted to study some deeper regions and use their own source spaces. To extend the range of analysis possible with Brainstorm, we have added the possibility to construct dipole grids that sample the full brain volume, and the appropriate visualization tools. See tutorial: Volume source estimation.

March 2011

Combined MEG/EEG source reconstruction

The way the contributions of MEG and EEG information are balanced in the combined source estimation has been largely improved. However, we still consider this feature as very experimental and recommend the average user to reconstruct the sources for EEG and MEG separately.

MRI displays: Contact sheets and smoothing

Many new tools for the visualization of sources on MRI slices. First, the sources values are smoothed in space after being re-interpolated in the MRI, which gives nicer and more readable images. The size of the smoothing kernel can be configured: right-click on the figure > MRI display. Then, those images can be used to create contact sheets along all the directions, either in time or in volume. See tutorial: ?Source estimation.

December 2010

Statistical tests: correction for multiple comparisons

Graphical batching interface

October 2010

Detection of bad trials / bad channels

Estimation of the noise covariance from continuous files

September 2010

Continuous/RAW file viewer and event editor

Import/export protocols and subjects

June 2010

Time-frequency

Brodman and Tzourio-Mazoyer atlases

Recordings visualization: 2D Layout

March 2010

Support for Xfit dipoles files

Minimum norm solution

Now using a more stable minimum norm solution.

Januray 2010

Project sources on default anatomy

Display channels in columns

& sensor selection

Support for native 4D/BTi file format

December 2009

Automatic updates