Parallel ICA Relating EEG Coherence to fMRI

Resting State Synchrony in Long-Term

Abstinent Alcoholics

VALERIE A. CARDENAS, MATHEW PRICE,

GEORGE FEIN

NEUROBEHAVIORAL RESEARCH, INC.

 What is a network?
Complex weblike structures; intrinsic organization
via which these structures operate

 Cell is network of chemicals

connected by chemical reactions
 Internet is network of routers
and computers linked by physical
or wireless links
 Social network, nodes are
humans and edges are social
relationships
 Brain is a network of neurons
that communicate through
synapses and neurotransmitters
How do we explore brain networks?

From Bullmore and Spoorns, 2009

 Resting State Synchrony in LTAA
Camchong et al., 2013
Appetitive Drive Regions

Lower RSS in LTAA

0.8

Mean z-scores
0.6

0.4

0.2
Caudate Thalamus
Caudate Thalamus

ρx y

€ 0.0
Inhibitory Control Region 0.6

Higher RSS in LTAA 0.5

Mean z-scores
0.2
0.4
0.4
0.3
0.6
DLPFC 0.2
Map of correlation between nucleus 0.8

accumbens time-series and time-series at 1.0 0.1 DLPFC

all other voxels, thresholded (p<0.001)
and clustered with FWE p<0.05
 Implications for Treatment

Similar studies in short-term abstinent alcoholics

show graded changes in resting-state synchrony
These cross-sectional differences in resting-state
synchrony may reflect adaptive changes necessary for
continued abstinence
Interventions that directly augment these changes
may have treatment potential
 Neurofeedback?
 Probably impractical to modify fMRI directly
 Goal: find EEG analogues to fMRI resting-state synchrony in
the appetitive drive and executive function networks
 Prior work

EEG Source modeling approaches

 Reconstruct source timecourses
 Estimate networks from correlated sources
 Liu 2018 (see below); also Pascual-Marqui (LORETA, 2002, 2007)

Liu et al., Front Neuroinform. 2018

 A Model-free Approach: Parallel ICA

Aims to:
 Identify independent components from separate modalities
 Identify the relationship between components estimated from each modality
Our modalities:
 Seed-correlation maps
 EEG-coherence between all electrode pairs in the theta, alpha, beta, and
gamma frequency bands
Extracted components:
 From the seed-correlation map, these components are interpreted as
networks of brain regions with spatially similar seed-synchrony across
subjects
 From the EEG coherence, these component reflect frequency-specific EEG
oscillations within networks
 What is ICA (independent components analysis)?

Separates a multivariate signal into additive

subcomponents
 Assumes subcomponents are:
 Non-Gaussian (typically true for high-dimensional data like
images)
 Independent (i.e., knowing one component gives you no
information about the other components)

Spatial ICA

Temporal ICA
 ICA: The basic idea

 Assume underlying source signals (S ) are independent.

 Assume a linear mixing matrix (A )… X=AS
 in order to find Z (S ), find W, (A-1 ) ...

Z=WX

 How? Initialise W and iteratively update W to minimise

or maximise a cost function that measures the (statistical)
independence between the rows of the Z
 Cannot solve using matrix decomposition
 Parallel ICA

Discover independent components from two

modalities, in addition to the relationship between
them

Observed data

Sources

Liu et al., Hum Brain Mapp. 2009

Add constraint to independence

max {H (Y1 ) + H (Y2 ) + Corr( A1 , A2 )2 }

Maximizing the entropy (a measure of independence) of
the sources in each modality and the correlation between
the contributions of the components in the two modalities
 Subjects

Same subjects as in Camchong et al., 2013

 23 non-substance abusing controls (NSAC)
 23 long-term abstinent alcoholics (LTAA: 7.9 ± 7.8 yrs)
 Of these 46 subjects, 41 had both usable fMRI and EEG
EEG and fMRI acquired in separate sessions
 NSAC: 6.6 ± 8.2 weeks between acquisitions
 LTAA: 4.7 ± 9.5 weeks between acquisitions
 fMRI

Siemens Tim Trio 3.0T

Preprocessed using AFNI
 Slice time correction, 3D motion correction (rigid registration
to first volume), temporal despiking, spatial smoothing, mean-
based intensity normalization, temporal bandpass filtering,
linear and quadratic detrending, FSL MELODIC to remove
noise
 Preprocessed images registered to MNI 152 atlas
 Seeds placed in bilateral Nacc
 Correlation between time-series at the seeds and every voxel
calculated, and transformed to z-scores
Example fMRI seed correlation maps
 EEG

64-channel EEG
 Eyes open, 7-8 minutes, 250 Hz sampling rate
 All pairwise coherences were computed
 Welch’s averaged periodogram using 2 second epochs with 50%
overlap
 Coherence estimates averaged within delta, theta, low alpha, high
alpha, low beta, high beta, low gamma, high gamma
 Coherence matrix for each band rearranged into a single vector for
each subject for input to parallel ICA
 Coherence vector
Subject 1 coherence vector

Delta coherence between F1 and all other electrodes

Delta coherence between Cz and all others

All delta pair-wise coherences

 fMRI seed correlation EEG coherence vector
All subjects All subjects

fMRI seed correlation EEG coherence

initialization initialization

fMRI Component Coherence Component

Maps Maps

fMRI seed correlation map EEG coherence

loading parameters loading parameters

Statistical Tests Statistical Tests

Modified from Meda et al., Neuroimage 2012

 Results I

3 sets of significantly correlated

seed-correlation/EEG-coherence components
Only one of these 3 sets was comprised of components
that differentiated between LTAA and NSAC
For this pair of components
 r=-0.60, t39=-4.71, corrected p=0.002
 fMRI component reflects greater synchrony in executive
networks and less synchrony in appetitive drive networks
 EEG components show mostly higher theta and alpha
coherence, regions of higher and lower beta coherence, and and
mostly lower gamma coherence in LTAA vs. NSAC
Lesser synchrony with Nacc seed Greater synchrony with Nacc seed
fMRI Seed-Correlation Map Component
 Theta Contributions to EEG Coherence Component
More lateral Central More lateral

higher coherence in NSAC between left

Higher coherence in NSAC

ipsilateral and midline

compared to LTAA
electrode position

Lower coherence in NSAC

compared to LTAA
lower coherence in NSAC with Fp2 and F6

electrode position
 Alpha Contributions to EEG Coherence Component

Higher coherence in NSAC

Lower frontal/parietal

compared to LTAA
Lower coherence in NSAC
compared to LTAA
More extensive pattern
of lower coherence in
lower coherence in NSAC with CPz and Fp2 NSAC in high alpha
Beta Contributions to EEG Coherence Component

Higher coherence in NSAC on left

Scattered lower and

higher beta 1 coherence
in NSAC vs. LTAA
Gamma Contributions to EEG Coherence Component
More lateral Central More lateral
 Results II

For the other two sets

 Two fMRI components correlated to same EEG component
 The EEG coherence component dominated by high alpha
coherence between central, parietal and occipital electrodes
 Likely reflects normal alpha rhythms
 One fMRI component had no distinguishing features
 Other fMRI component showed high synchrony with medial
frontal cortex and low synchrony with brainstem
 These represent networks where synchrony is either unaffected
by long-term alcohol use or has completely resolved with
abstinence
 EEG coherence results interpretation

Gamma
 Gamma synchonization may underlie perceptual experience and cognition
 Gamma combines activity of spatially localized neuron groups
 Decreased gamma coherence likely degrades network performance
 Decreased gamma coherence observed in LTAA may contribute to
decreased appetitive drive
Theta and alpha
 Alpha attributed to suppression of brain responses to distractors
 Presence of alpha may signal absence of bottom up processing
 Theta modulation of gamma may be important for short-term memory
 Theta coherence increases during working memory and mental imagery
 Together, these results suggest theta and alpha coherence are characteristics of top-
down processing
 Increased theta and alpha coherence observed in LTAA may contribute
to increased inhibitory control and emotion regulation
 Pros and Cons of Parallel ICA

Pros
 Model-free
 Looks for features in derived maps that covary across subjects
 Works for EEG and fMRI that are not simultaneously recorded
Cons
 Prone to overfitting
 Difficult to determine the number of independent components
 Components are not sparse
 Nonlinear estimation; “best” fit not guaranteed
 Components may not correspond to true “sources”
 Conclusion and Future Directions

Parallel ICA identified a pair of EEG coherence and rs-fMRI

seed-correlation map components
 fMRI component reflects executive function and appetitive drive brain
regions
 EEG component reflects coherence changes consistent with improved
executive function and reduced appetitive drive
This suggests that rs-fMRI synchrony is reflected in
spontaneous EEG, consistent with other report AND
 You can find analogues with only 64 channels of EEG
Future work should obtain simultaneous fMRI and EEG
Longitudinal studies of rs-fMRI and EEG from early to late
abstinence should be undertaken to establish that networks
change with abstinence