[FieldTrip] Cortical surface VS brain volume source models

[Maris Skujevskis]

Dear Fieldtrip users,

I am currently working on source reconstruction (EEG) of both ERPs and of
oscillatory activity.

I have 3 short and related questions of clarification:
(1)
Why are MNE suite and Free Surfer used to construct the
cortical-surface-based source model in the MNE tutorial (
http://www.fieldtriptoolbox.org/tutorial/minimumnormestimate)?
Is it simply because discretizing the source model into locations on the
cortical surface (as opposed to a 3D volume of grid points) is a
functionality not provided by Fieldtrip directly?

(2)
So, if I prefer to have a 3D grid as the source model for my MNE source
reconstruction, can I simply make use of Fieldtrip's own function
ft_prepare_sourcemodel and forget about MNE Suite & Free Surfer?

(3)
Does the choice between a cortical-surface-based an a brain-volume-based
source model depend primarily on the expectation of where the sources would
most likely be located?
Or are there other reasons why the MNE source reconstruction approach would
make use of a cortical-surface-based source space instead of a 3D
volumetric grid (as found in all the beamformer tutorials)?



Thanks!

Maris
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