EEG-fMRI Based Information Theoretic Characterization of the Human Perceptual Decision System

The modern metaphor of the brain is that of a dynamic information processing device. In the current study we investigate how a core cognitive network of the human brain, the perceptual decision system, can be characterized regarding its spatiotemporal representation of task-relevant information. We capitalize on a recently developed information theoretic framework for the analysis of simultaneously acquired electroencephalography (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging data (fMRI) (Ostwald et al. (2010), NeuroImage 49: 498-516). We show how this framework naturally extends from previous validations in the sensory to the cognitive domain and how it enables the economic description of neural spatiotemporal information encoding. Specifically, based on simultaneous EEG-fMRI data features from n = 13 observers performing a visual perceptual decision task, we demonstrate how the information theoretic framework is able to reproduce earlier findings on the neurobiological underpinnings of perceptual decisions from the response signal features' marginal distributions. Furthermore, using the joint EEG-fMRI feature distribution, we provide novel evidence for a highly distributed and dynamic encoding of task-relevant information in the human brain

Publication type: 
Articolo
Author or Creator: 
Ostwald, Dirk
Porcaro, Camillo
Mayhew, Stephen D
Bagshaw, Andrew P.
Publisher: 
Public Library of Science, San Francisco, CA , Stati Uniti d'America
Source: 
PloS one 7 (2012): 1–16. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0033896
info:cnr-pdr/source/autori:Ostwald, Dirk; Porcaro, Camillo; Mayhew, Stephen D; Bagshaw, Andrew P./titolo:EEG-fMRI Based Information Theoretic Characterization of the Human Perceptual Decision System/doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0033896/rivista:PloS one/anno:2
Date: 
2012
Resource Identifier: 
http://www.cnr.it/prodotto/i/219023
https://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0033896
info:doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0033896
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0033896
Language: 
Eng