Simulations

Author: Francois Tadel

This tutorial addresses everything that can be called "simulation" in Brainstorm: simulation of simple signals, simulation of full source maps from a few scouts, simulation of MEG/EEG recordings from source maps (real or synthetic). Its goal is to group all the information that was previously spread across multiple tutorials and forum posts, and difficult to access.

Simulate signals

You have no data in your database. Some process in the Simulate group can generate signals and save them in files in the protocol. Because you start from nothing, the Process1 list needs to be empty. Click on Run and try the following processes.

Simulate generic signals

Simulate PAC signals

https://neuroimage.usc.edu/brainstorm/Tutorials/TutPac#Simulate_signals

Generate full source maps from scout signals

Simulate MEG/EEG recordings from real sources

Simulate MEG/EEG recordings from simulated dipoles

These examples are based on the introduction tutorials, but can easily be transposed to any study. The inputs you need to provide to the process depend on the type of orientation constrains

Constrained

Unconstrained

https://neuroimage.usc.edu/brainstorm/Tutorials/TutVolSource#Volume_scouts

Additional documentation

A great simulation article was published by Prof. Debener's neuropsychology lab in Oldenburg. It uses Brainstorm to evaluate and improve the design of ear-EEG devices. All the Matlab/Brainstorm scripts used in this study are available on figshare, together with some videos illustrating the simulations that were done.

Meiser A, Tadel F, Debener S, Bleichner MG
The Sensitivity of Ear-EEG: Evaluating the Source-Sensor Relationship Using Forward Modeling
Brain Topography, Aug 2020