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Ristaniemi, T.

Publications and source records attributed to Ristaniemi, T..

2 recordsLinked to original sources

PCA-based source-space contrast maps reveal psychologically meaningful individual differences in continuous MEG activity

Within the field of neuroimaging, there has been an increasing trend towards studying brain activity in naturalistic conditions, and it is possible to robustly estimate networks of on-going oscillatory activity in the brain. However, not many studies have focused on differences between individuals in on-going brain activity that would be associable to psychological or behavioral characteristics. Existing standard methods can perform well at single-participant level, but generalizing the methodology across many participants is challenging due to individual differences of brains. As an example of a clinically relevant, naturalistic condition we consider here mindfulness. Trait mindfulness, as well as a mindfulness-based intervention cultivating focused attention, is often associated with benefits for psychological health. Therefore, the manner in which the brain engages in focused attention vs. mind wandering is likely to associate with individual differences in psycho-behavioral tendencies.\n\nWe recorded MEG from 29 participants both in a state of focused attention and in a state of simulated mind wandering. We used Principal Component Analysis to decompose spatial average activation maps of focused attention contrasted with two different mind wandering states. The first principal component, which reflected differential engagement of bilateral parietal areas during focused attention vs. mind wandering, was associated with behavioral characteristics of inhibition, anxiousness and depression, as measured by standard questionnaires. We demonstrated that such decomposition of time-averaged contrast maps can overcome some of the challenges in methods based on concatenated data, especially from the perspective of behaviorally and clinically relevant characteristics in the ongoing brain oscillatory activity.\n\nHighlightsO_LIWe present a specific method to analyse/establish associations between brain oscillations and behavioral characteristics.\nC_LIO_LIWe found that activity levels in parietal areas during mind wandering compared to focused attention were associated with the behavioral trait of inhibition and anxiety.\nC_LI

neuroscience

Exploring Frequency-dependent Brain Networks from ongoing EEG using Spatial ICA during music listening

Recently, exploring brain activity based on functional networks during naturalistic stimuli especially music and video represents an attractive challenge because of the low signal-to-noise ratio in collected brain data. Although most efforts focusing on exploring the listening brain have been made through functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), sensor-level electro- or magnetoencephalography (EEG/MEG) technique, little is known about how neural rhythms are involved in the brain network activity under naturalistic stimuli. This study exploited cortical oscillations through analysis of ongoing EEG and musical feature during free-listening to music. We used a data-driven method that combined music information retrieval with spatial Independent Components Analysis (ICA) to probe the interplay between the spatial profiles and the spectral patterns. We projected the sensor data into cortical space using a minimum-norm estimate and applied the Short Time Fourier Transform (STFT) to obtain frequency information. Then, spatial ICA was made to extract spatial-spectral-temporal information of brain activity in source space and five long-term musical features were computationally extracted from the naturalistic stimuli. The spatial profiles of the components whose temporal courses were significantly correlated with musical feature time series were clustered to identify reproducible brain networks across the participants. Using the proposed approach, we found brain networks of musical feature processing are frequency-dependent and three plausible frequency-dependent networks were identified; the proposed method seems valuable for characterizing the large-scale frequency-dependent brain activity engaged in musical feature processing.

neuroscience