Estimation of Cortical Connectivity in Humans

Laura Astolfi is a researcher at the Department of Human Physiology and Pharmacology of the University of Rome “La Sapienza” and at the Neuro[1]physiopathology Unit of the Fondazione Santa Lucia, Rome. Her research interests involve the study of the cortical connectivity, the neuroelectrical inverse problem and the multimodal integration of fMRI and HR EEG data. She received the degree in Electronic Engineering cum laude from the University of Rome “La Sapienza” in 2003 and the PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Bologna in 2007. Fabio Babiloni was born in Rome in 1961. He got the master degree in Electronic Engineering at the University of Rome “La Sapienza” summa cum laude in 1986, and the PhD in Computational Engineering at the Helsinki University of Technology, Helsinki in the 2000 with a dissertation on the multimodal integration of EEG and fMRI. He is currently Associate Professor of Human Physiology at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Rome “La Sapienza”, Rome, Italy. He is author of more that 85 papers on bioengineering and neurophysiological topics on international peer-reviewed scientific journals, and more than 200 contributions to conferences and books chapter. Currents interest are in the field of multimodal integration of EEG, MEG and fMRI data, cortical connectivity estimation and Brain Computer Interface. Prof. Babiloni is currently Associate Editor of four scientific Journals “Clinical Neurophysiology”, “International Journal of Bioelectromagnetism”,“IEEE Trans. On Neural System and Rehabilitation Engineering”, and “Computational Intelligence and Neuroscience”.

• Introduction.- Estimation of the Effective Connectivity from Stationary Data by Structural Equation Modeling.- Estimation of the Functional Connectivity from Stationary Data by Multivariate Autoregressive Methods.- Estimation of Cortical Activity by the use of Realistic Head Modeling.- Application: Estimation of Connectivity from Movement-Related Potentials.- Application to High-Resolution EEG Recordings in a Cognitive Task (Stroop Test).- Application to Data Related to the Intention of Limb Movements in Normal Subjects and in a Spinal Cord Injured Patient.- The Instantaneous Estimation of the Time-Varying Cortical Connectivity by Adaptive Multivariate Estimators.- Time-Varying Connectivity from Event-Related Potentials.