Combined event-related fMRI and EEG evidence for temporal-parietal cortex activation during target detection

Target detection is the process of bringing a salient stimulus into conscious awareness. Target detection evokes a prominent event-related potential (ERP) component (P3) in the electroencephalogram (EEG). We combined the high spatial resolution of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with the high temporal resolution of EEG to investigate the neural generators of the P3. Event-related brain activation (ERBA) and ERPs were computed by time-locked averaging of fMRI and EEG, respectively, recorded using the same paradigm in the same subjects. Target detection elicited significantly greater ERBAs bilaterally in the temporal-parietal cortex, thalamus and anterior cingulate. Spatio-temporal modelling of ERPs based on dipole locations derived from the ERBAs indicated that bilateral sources in the temporal-parietal cortex are the main generators of the P3. The findings provide convergent fMRI and EEG evidence for significant activation of the temporal-parietal cortex 285-610 ms after stimulus onset during target detection. The methods developed here provide a novel multimodal neuroimaging technique to investigate the spatio-temporal aspects of processes underlying brain function.