Author: Mina Kheirkhah, Philipp Baumbach, Lutz Leistritz, Stefan Brodoehl, Theresa Götz, Ralph Huonker, Otto W Witte, Carsten M Klingner
Affiliation: 1 Biomagnetic Center, Jena University Hospital, 07747 Jena, Germany.
2 Department of Anesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine, Jena University Hospital, 07747 Jena, Germany.
3 Institute of Medical Statistics, Computer and Data Sciences, Jena University Hospital, 07740 Jena, Germany.
4 Hans Berger Department of Neurology, Jena University Hospital, 07747 Jena, Germany.
Conference/Journal: Brain Sci
Date published: 2020 Jun 6
Other:
Volume ID: 10 , Issue ID: 6 , Pages: E352 , Special Notes: doi: 10.3390/brainsci10060352. , Word Count: 214
The processing of emotions in the human brain is an extremely complex process that extends across a large number of brain areas and various temporal processing steps. In the case of magnetoencephalography (MEG) data, various frequency bands also contribute differently. Therefore, in most studies, the analysis of emotional processing has to be limited to specific sub-aspects. Here, we demonstrated that these problems can be overcome by using a nonparametric statistical test called the cluster-based permutation test (CBPT). To the best of our knowledge, our study is the first to apply the CBPT to MEG data of brain responses to emotional stimuli. For this purpose, different emotionally impacting (pleasant and unpleasant) and neutral pictures were presented to 17 healthy subjects. The CBPT was applied to the power spectra of five brain frequencies, comparing responses to emotional versus neutral stimuli over entire MEG channels and time intervals within 1500 ms post-stimulus. Our results showed significant clusters in different frequency bands, and agreed well with many previous emotion studies. However, the use of the CBPT allowed us to easily include large numbers of MEG channels, wide frequency, and long time-ranges in one study, which is a more reliable alternative to other studies that consider only specific sub-aspects.
Keywords: MEG; alpha; beta; cluster-based permutation test; delta; emotion; gamma; theta.
PMID: 32517238