Correspondence of event-related potential tomography and functional magnetic resonance imaging during language processing

Abstract

Combining event-related potentials (ERP) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) may provide sufficient temporal and spatial resolution to clarify the functional connectivity of neural processes, provided both methods represent the same neural networks. The current study investigates the statistical correspondence of ERP tomography and fMRI within the common activity volume and time range in a complex visual language task. The results demonstrate that both methods represent similar neural networks within the bilateral occipital gyrus, lingual gyrus, precuneus and middle frontal gyrus, and the left inferior and superior parietal lobe, middle and superior temporal gyrus, cingulate gyrus, superior frontal gyrus and precentral gyrus. The mean correspondence of both methods over subjects was significant. On an individual basis, only half of the subjects showed significantly corresponding activity patterns, suggesting that a one-to-one correspondence between individual fMRI activation patterns and ERP source tomographies integrated over microstates cannot be assumed in all cases.