Cancellation of EEG and MEG signals generated by extended and distributed sources

Extracranial patterns of scalp potentials and magnetic fields, as measured with electro- and magnetoencephalography (EEG, MEG), are spatially widespread even when the underlying source in the brain is focal. Therefore, loss in signal magnitude due to cancellation is expected when multiple brain regions are simultaneously active. We characterized these cancellation effects in EEG and MEG using a forward model with sources constrained on an anatomically accurate reconstruction of the cortical surface. Prominent cancellation was found for both EEG and MEG in the case of multiple randomly distributed source dipoles, even when the number of simultaneous dipoles was small. Substantial cancellation occurred also for locally extended patches of simulated activity, when the patches extended to opposite walls of sulci and gyri. For large patches, a difference between EEG and MEG cancellation was seen, presumably due to selective cancellation of tangentially vs. radially oriented sources. Cancellation effects can be of importance when electrophysiological data are related to hemodynamic measures. Furthermore, the selective cancellation may be used to explain some observed differences between EEG and MEG in terms of focal vs. widespread cortical activity.