Revisiting the Characterization of Resting Brain Dynamics with the Permutation Jensen–Shannon Distance

Abstract

Taking into account the complexity of the human brain dynamics, the appropriate characterization of any brain state is a challenge not easily met. Actually, even the discrimination of simple behavioral tasks, such as resting with eyes closed or eyes open, represents an intricate problem and many efforts have been and are being made to overcome it. In this work, the aforementioned issue is carefully addressed by performing multiscale analyses of electroencephalogram records with the permutation Jensen–Shannon distance. The influence that linear and nonlinear temporal correlations have on the discrimination is unveiled. Results obtained lead to significant conclusions that help to achieve an improved distinction between these resting brain states.

Keywords

• time series
• symbolic analysis
• ordinal patterns
• permutation entropy
• Jensen–Shannon divergence
• permutation Jensen–Shannon distance