How does one do simulations for statistics?

Stanley Klein sklein at BERKELEY.EDU
Tue Nov 24 12:43:39 CET 2009


Hi again,
I have had a suggestion to try the freqsimulation function of
Fieldtrip. But I would like to have something in the time domain so
that I can play with autoregressive coefficients between sources and
so that I can put in nonlinearities like multiplicative noise if I'd
like. .

Incidentally the AR coefficients that I had given corresponded to a
filter that looks like:
    t=0:2:199;  %t is in msec
    x=exp(-t/25).*sin(2*pi*t/60);    %this gives about one damped
cycle with 60 msec period
    XX=[x(3:100); x(2:99); x(1:98)];
    coef=XX(1,:)/XX(2:3,:)    %linear regression to get AR coefficients

where coef = [1.806 -.852] from this linear regression, which is
similar to what I had sent in my previous email for generating the
noisy filtered time series.

Again, my question is how to generate noise that looks like EEG or
MEG. Can I do an adequate job simply by getting nice AR coefficients
(what would some good coefficients be?)  or do I need to do fancier
things? For example, should I worry about sparse bursts of alpha? What
do people commonly do to simulate data. I like to use simulated time
series
in addition to real data so that I am confident about what is going on
underneath.
Stan


On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 2:18 AM, Stanley Klein <sklein at berkeley.edu> wrote:
> I too have lots of questions on how to do statistics on EEG and MEG.
> Right now for example we are getting very similar EEG and MEG
> waveforms (following SVD) and are trying out various statistical ways
> of comparing them. In addition to using Fieldtrip's wonderful (but
> complicated) cluster permutation test for dealing with multiple
> comparisons and correlated noise issues we are trying other ideas. The
> only way that we can figure out whether we are on the right track is
> to do simulations where we know the correct answer. Does anyone have
> good advice on how to do good simulations? We are using the CTF
> machine for our EEG and MEG (and Biosemi for EEG alone). Every sample
> is about 2 msec. For a single trace  we are using something like the
> following Matlab code that gives a flat amplitude spectrum out to 15
> Hz and then close to 1/f^2 beyond that.
>
> x(1:2)=[0 1];
> for i=3:10000;
>   x(i) = 1.81*x(i-1) -.85*x(i-2)+randn;  %AR model for time series
> end
>
> The AR coefficients were obtained by trial and error and have a lot of
> flexibility.
>
> The question again is whether anyone has good suggestions for how to
> simulate EEG or MEG noise in the time domain?  Even better would be
> something good to read.   I'd like the noise to be manufactured in the
> time domain since I'll be doing other things for the signal in the
> time domain including multiplicative noise. Without good simulations
> how do people test all their statistics, especially when there is a
> bunch of preprocessing like SVD (or complicated, nonlinear interaction
> terms)?
> thanks,
> Stan Klein
>

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