Corticomuscular coherence
Corticomuscular Coherence is referred to the synchrony in the neural activity of brain's cortical areas and muscle. The neural activities are picked up by electrophysiological recordings from the brain (e.g. EEG, MEG, ECoG, etc.) and muscle (EMG). It is a method to study the neural control of movement.
Physiology
Corticomuscular Coherence was initially reported between MEG and EMG [1] and is widely studied between EMG and EEG, MEG, etc.
The origins of corticomuscular coherence seem to be communication in corticospinal pathways between primary motor cortex and muscles. While the role of descending corticomuscular pathways in generation of coherence are more clear, the role of ascending sensory spinocortical pathways are less certain.
Corticomuscular coherence has been of special interest in alpha band (about 10Hz), in Beta band (15-30 Hz), and in Gamma band (35-60Hz).
Mathematics and Statistics
A classic and commonly used approach to assess the synchrony between neural signals is to use Coherence[2].
Statistical significance of coherence is found as function of number of data segments with assumption of the signals' normal distribution[3]. Altrnatively non-parametric techniques such as bootstrapping can be used.
References
- ^ Conway, B. A., Halliday, D. M., Farmer, S. F., Shahani, U., Maas, P., Weir, A. I., & Rosenberg, J. R. (1995). Synchronization between motor cortex and spinal motoneuronal pool during the performance of a maintained motor task in man. J Physiol, 489 ( Pt 3), 917–924. http://doi.org/10.1113/jphysiol.1995.sp021104
- ^ Halliday, D. M., Rosenberg, J. R., Amjad, A. M., Breeze, P., Conway, B. A., & Farmer, S. F. (1995). A framework for the analysis of mixed time series/point process data—Theory and application to the study of physiological tremor, single motor unit discharges and electromyograms. Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology, 64(2–3), 237–278. http://doi.org/10.1016/S0079-6107(96)00009-0
- ^ Halliday, D. M., & Rosenberg, J. R. (1999). Time and frequency domain analysis of spike train and time series data. In Modern techniques in neuroscience research (pp. 503–543). Springer. Retrieved from http://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-58552-4_18