Microstates and power envelope hidden Markov modeling probe bursting brain activity at different timescales
N. Coquelet,
X. De Tiège,
L. Roshchupkina,
P. Peigneux,
S. Goldman,
M. Woolrich,
V. Wens
Affiliations
N. Coquelet
Laboratoire de Cartographie fonctionnelle du Cerveau (LCFC), UNI – ULB Neuroscience Institute, Université libre de Bruxelles, Brussels 1070, Belgium; Corresponding author.
X. De Tiège
Laboratoire de Cartographie fonctionnelle du Cerveau (LCFC), UNI – ULB Neuroscience Institute, Université libre de Bruxelles, Brussels 1070, Belgium; Magnetoencephalography Unit, Service of Translational Neuroimaging, CUB – Hôpital Erasme, Brussels, Belgium
L. Roshchupkina
Laboratoire de Cartographie fonctionnelle du Cerveau (LCFC), UNI – ULB Neuroscience Institute, Université libre de Bruxelles, Brussels 1070, Belgium; Neuropsychology and Functional Neuroimaging Research Unit (UR2NF), Centre for Research in Cognition and Neurosciences (CRCN), UNI – ULB Neuroscience Institute, Université libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium
P. Peigneux
Neuropsychology and Functional Neuroimaging Research Unit (UR2NF), Centre for Research in Cognition and Neurosciences (CRCN), UNI – ULB Neuroscience Institute, Université libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium
S. Goldman
Laboratoire de Cartographie fonctionnelle du Cerveau (LCFC), UNI – ULB Neuroscience Institute, Université libre de Bruxelles, Brussels 1070, Belgium; Magnetoencephalography Unit, Service of Translational Neuroimaging, CUB – Hôpital Erasme, Brussels, Belgium
M. Woolrich
Oxford Centre for Human Brain Activity, Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
V. Wens
Laboratoire de Cartographie fonctionnelle du Cerveau (LCFC), UNI – ULB Neuroscience Institute, Université libre de Bruxelles, Brussels 1070, Belgium; Magnetoencephalography Unit, Service of Translational Neuroimaging, CUB – Hôpital Erasme, Brussels, Belgium
State modeling of whole-brain electroencephalography (EEG) or magnetoencephalography (MEG) allows to investigate transient, recurring neurodynamical events. Two widely-used techniques are the microstate analysis of EEG signals and hidden Markov modeling (HMM) of MEG power envelopes. Both reportedly lead to similar state lifetimes on the 100 ms timescale, suggesting a common neural basis. To investigate whether microstates and power envelope HMM states describe the same neural dynamics, we used simultaneous MEG/EEG recordings at rest and compared the spatial signature and temporal activation dynamics of microstates and power envelope HMM states obtained separately from EEG and MEG. Results showed that microstates and power envelope HMM states differ both spatially and temporally. Microstates reflect sharp events of neural synchronization, whereas power envelope HMM states disclose network-level activity with 100–200 ms lifetimes. Further, MEG microstates do not correspond to the canonical EEG microstates but are better interpreted as split HMM states. On the other hand, both MEG and EEG HMM states involve the (de)activation of similar functional networks. Microstate analysis and power envelope HMM thus appear sensitive to neural events occurring over different spatial and temporal scales. As such, they represent complementary approaches to explore the fast, sub-second scale bursting electrophysiological dynamics in spontaneous human brain activity.
