Head movements of children in MEG : quantification, effects on source estimation, and compensation

Head movements during MEG recordings in children may lead to inaccurate localization of brain activity. In this thesis, we examined the effects of head movements on source estimation in twenty children performing a simple auditory cognitive task. In addition, we tested the ability of a recently introduced spherical harmonic expansion method, signal space separation (SSS), to compensate for the effects of head movements on two source models: equivalent current dipoles (ECDs) and minimum norm estimates (MNE). In the majority of subjects, the goodness-of-fit of ECDs fit to the peak of the auditory N100m response was increased following the SSS correction compared with the averaged forward solution method proposed earlier. The spatial spread of ECDs as determined with a bootstrapping approach was also reduced after SSS correction. In addition, the MNE source estimates were spatially sharpened following SSS application, indicative of an increase in signal to noise ratio. Together these results suggest that SSS is an effective method to compensate for head movements in MEG recordings in children.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2007

Author dc:creator

• Wehner, Daniel T

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Elfar Adalsteinsson, Seppo Ahlfors and Batti Hamalainen.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/40540

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/40540