Transmodal Analysis of Neural Signals

Abstract

Localizing neuronal activity in the brain, both in time and in space, is a central challenge to advance the understanding of brain function. Because of the inability of any single neuroimaging techniques to cover all aspects at once, there is a growing interest to combine signals from multiple modalities in order to benefit from the advantages of each acquisition method. Due to the complexity and unknown parameterization of any suggested complete model of BOLD response in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the development of a reliable ultimate fusion approach remains difficult. But besides the primary goal of superior temporal and spatial resolution, conjoint analysis of data from multiple imaging modalities can alternatively be used to segregate neural information from physiological and acquisition noise. In this paper we suggest a novel methodology which relies on constructing a quantifiable mapping of data from one modality (electroencephalography; EEG) into another (fMRI), called transmodal analysis of neural signals (TRANSfusion). TRANSfusion attempts to map neural data embedded within the EEG signal into its reflection in fMRI data. Assessing the mapping performance on unseen data allows to localize brain areas where a significant portion of the signal could be reliably reconstructed, hence the areas neural activity of which is reflected in both EEG and fMRI data. Consecutive analysis of the learnt model allows to localize areas associated with specific frequency bands of EEG, or areas functionally related (connected or coherent) to any given EEG sensor. We demonstrate the performance of TRANSfusion on artificial and real data from an auditory experiment. We further speculate on possible alternative uses: cross-modal data filtering and EEG-driven interpolation of fMRI signals to obtain arbitrarily high temporal sampling of BOLD.