Modeling extended sources of event-related potentials using anatomical and physiological constraints

For the study of functional organization and reorganization of the human cortex by means of electromagnetic source imaging, a measure of the location and spatial extent of neural sources is of interest. This study evaluates the cortical patch method (CPM), an iterative procedure introduced by Lütkenhöner et al. [1995] that models EEG/MEG activity by means of extended cortical patches. Anatomical information is used to constrain estimates of location and extent of neural sources that generate the measured evoked potential. Whereas minimum norm approaches use mathematical constraints to solve the ambiguity of the inverse problem, the CPM introduces constraints based on anatomical and physiological knowledge about neural mass activity. In order to test the proposed method, the simulated activity in an artificial sulcus was subjected to the CPM. The results show that even activity on opposing walls of a sulcus can be well reconstructed. The simulations demonstrate the usefulness and limits of the CPM in estimating the spatial extent of neural sources in the cerebral cortex. As an example, an application of the method on experimental somatosensory evoked potentials is presented in the Appendix.