Tutorial 15: Source estimation
Authors: Francois Tadel, Elizabeth Bock, John C Mosher, Sylvain Baillet
Contents
From continuous tutorials:
Inverse model
Right-click on (Common files), on the head model or on the subject node, and select "Compute sources". A shared inversion kernel is created in (Common files); a link node is now visible for each recordings file, single trials and averages. For more information about what those links mean and the operations performed to display them, please refer to the tutorial #8 "Source estimation".
Explore the sources
Right-click on the sources for the left average > Cortical activations > Display on cortex, or simply double click on the file. Go to the main response peak at t = 30ms, and increase the amplitude threshold to 100%. You see a strong activity around the right primary somatosensory cortex, but there are still lots of brain areas that are shown in plain red (value >= 100% maximum of the colorbar ~= 280 pA.m).
The colorbar maximum is set to an estimation of the maximum source amplitude over the time. This estimation is done by finding the time instant with the highest global field power on the sensors (green trace GFP), estimating the sources for this time only, and then taking the maximum source value at this time point. It is a very fast estimate, but not very reliable; we use it because calculating the full source matrix (all the time points x all the sources) just for finding the maximum value would be too long.
In this case, the real maximum is probably higher than what is used by default. To redefine the colorbar maximum: right-click on the 3D figure > Colormap: sources > Set colorbar max value. Set the maximum to 480 pA.m, or any other value that would lead to see just one very focal point on the brain at 30ms.
Go back to the first small peak at t=16ms, and lower the threshold to 10%. Then do what you did with at the sensor level: follow the information processing in the brain until 100ms, millisecond by millisecond, adapting the threshold and the camera position when needed:
16 ms (top-left): First response, primary somatosensory cortex (S1 right)
30 ms (top-right): S1 right
60 ms (bottom-left): Secondary somatosensory cortex (S2 right)
70 ms (bottom-right): Activity ipsilateral to the stimulus (S2 left + S2 right)
