Beamformer time course

Daria Osipova Daria.Osipova at FCDONDERS.RU.NL
Wed Nov 15 17:31:52 CET 2006


Hi

In continuation of this discussion...

I would like to use the lcmv method to localize sources of (band-pass
filtered) ongoing alpha which I can use as spatial filters for my
(unfiltered) data.
>>From the previous discussions on lcmv it seems that most people try to
estimate covariance matrix from the average since they are doing ERFs.
In my case data is not time-locked so I have to estimate it from single
trials and not from the average (I would think).
But judging from your response, Robert, it seems that cfg.rawtrial = 'yes'
(which uses covariance matrix from single trials and applies it to single
trials) produces a noisy estimate.
Is there a workaround then?
Thanks in advance
Best regards,
Dasha
PS I need time-domain data



-----Original Message-----
From: FieldTrip discussion list [mailto:FIELDTRIP at NIC.SURFNET.NL] On Behalf
Of Robert Oostenveld
Sent: Tuesday, May 23, 2006 12:13 PM
To: FIELDTRIP at NIC.SURFNET.NL
Subject: Re: [FIELDTRIP] Beamformer time course

Hi Marie,

On 22 May 2006, at 17:18, Marie Smith wrote:
> I have been trying out the various methods as discussed and have
> come across a problem.
>
> When I select cfg.singletrials = 'yes'  I get a number of error
> messages saying
> error('this option contains a bug, and is therefore not supported
> at the moment');
>
> I am using the toolbox  fieldtrip-20060516.
>
> I noticed however, if I select cfg.rawtrials = 'yes' the function
> will run.

I recall disabling this functionality, since it was rarely used and
since I was concerned that it would not be correct. I now had a more
detailled look at the code.

If you do rawtrial=yes, beamformer uses the single-trial covariance
to construct the filter and also applies it to the single trial
covariance/csd. That results in a very poorly estimated filter in
each trial, hence projecting large amounts of noise and a lot of
variance over trials. Therefore we found it not to be very usefull on
real data, although conceptually and in the code it is correct.

The idea behind singletrial=yes is that beamformer uses the average
covariance to construct the filter and applies it to the single trial
covariance/csd. The problem in the code however is that beamformer
would use the averaged covariance/csd to estimate the power and not
the single trial covariance/csd. The estimated single-trial
timecourse would be correct, but the power would not be correct.
Therefore I disabled that option in the code.

The solution is something that you can do yourself in two subsequent
runs of sourceanalysis: you can do sourceanalysis on the average
(i.e. do not specify any of singletrial/rawtrial options) and specify
keepfilter=yes. That will give you the filter, computed on the
average covariance. Subsequently do cfg.grid=source2grid(source), and
use the resulting grid (including the filters) in the second run of
sourceanalysis, in which you specify cfg.rawtrial=yes. In the second
run, the previous (based on average covariance) filters will be
applied to the unaveraged data, resulting in the desired single-trial
power and dipole moment.

best regards,
Robert



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