Cortical functional connectivity inference using MEG

A novel technique to explore functional connectivity using magnetoencephalography (MEG) is presented. Source localization is performed prior to connectivity analysis, allowing identification of the cortical regions involved. This technique controls for point-spread in the minimum norm inverse solution by generating a null distribution with noise data. Data from an auditory attention task reveals that in the alpha-frequency range, cortical activity in the auditory cortices is coherent with frontal eye fields, areas known to be engaged during other attention tasks. Maps generated with this technique allow visualization of inter-areal connectivity to pre-defined regions-of-interest.