Skip to main content
bioRxiv
  • Home
  • About
  • Submit
  • ALERTS / RSS
Advanced Search
New Results

Reconciling fMRI and EEG indices of attentional modulations in human visual cortex

View ORCID ProfileSirawaj Itthipuripat, View ORCID ProfileThomas C Sprague, View ORCID ProfileJohn T Serences
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/391193
Sirawaj Itthipuripat
1Neurosciences Graduate Program, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093, USA
2Learning Institute, King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi, Bangkok, 10140, Thailand
3Department of Psychology, Center for Integrative and Cognitive Neuroscience, and Interdisciplinary Program in Neuroscience, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, 37235, USA
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Sirawaj Itthipuripat
  • For correspondence: itthipuripat.sirawaj@gmail.com tsprague@ucsb.edu
Thomas C Sprague
1Neurosciences Graduate Program, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093, USA
4Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California 93106-9660, USA
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Thomas C Sprague
  • For correspondence: itthipuripat.sirawaj@gmail.com tsprague@ucsb.edu
John T Serences
1Neurosciences Graduate Program, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093, USA
5Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093, USA
6Kavli Foundation for the Brain and Mind, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093-1090, USA
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for John T Serences
  • Abstract
  • Full Text
  • Info/History
  • Metrics
  • Preview PDF
Loading

Abstract

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG) are the two most popular non-invasive methods used to study the neural mechanisms underlying human cognition. These approaches are considered complementary: fMRI has higher spatial resolution but sluggish temporal resolution, whereas EEG has millisecond temporal resolution, but only at a broad spatial scale. Beyond the obvious fact that fMRI measures properties of blood and EEG measures changes in electric fields, many foundational studies assume that, aside from differences in spatial and temporal precision, these two methods index the same underlying neural modulations. We tested this assumption by using EEG and fMRI to measure attentional modulations of neural responses to stimuli of different visual contrasts. We found that equivalent experiments performed using fMRI and EEG on the same participants revealed remarkably different patterns of attentional modulations: event-related fMRI responses provided evidence for an additive increase in responses across all contrasts equally, whereas early stimulus-evoked event-related potentials (ERPs) showed larger modulations with increasing stimulus contrast and only a later negative-going ERP and low-frequency oscillatory EEG signals showed effects similar to fMRI. These results demonstrate that there is not a one-to-one correspondence between the physiological mechanisms that give rise to modulations of fMRI responses and the most commonly used ERP markers, and that the typical approach of employing fMRI and EEG to gain complementary information about localization and temporal dynamics is over-simplified. Instead, fMRI and EEG index different physiological modulations and their joint application affords synergistic insights into the neural mechanisms supporting human cognition.

Acknowledgments & author contributions

SI and TCS conceived, implemented the experiments, collected and analyzed the data, and cowrote the manuscript. JTS conceived and supervised the project and co-wrote the manuscript. Funding was provided by NIH R01-EY025872 (J.T.S.), the James S. McDonnell Foundation (J.T.S), the Howard Hughes Medical Institute International program (S.I.), a Royal Thai Scholarship from the Ministry of Science and Technology in Thailand (S.I.), NIH T32-MH020002 (T.C.S.), NIH T32-EY007136 (T.C.S.), and NIH F32-EY023438 (T.C.S.).

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission.
Back to top
PreviousNext
Posted August 13, 2018.
Download PDF
Email

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word about bioRxiv.

NOTE: Your email address is requested solely to identify you as the sender of this article.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Reconciling fMRI and EEG indices of attentional modulations in human visual cortex
(Your Name) has forwarded a page to you from bioRxiv
(Your Name) thought you would like to see this page from the bioRxiv website.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Share
Reconciling fMRI and EEG indices of attentional modulations in human visual cortex
Sirawaj Itthipuripat, Thomas C Sprague, John T Serences
bioRxiv 391193; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/391193
Reddit logo Twitter logo Facebook logo LinkedIn logo Mendeley logo
Citation Tools
Reconciling fMRI and EEG indices of attentional modulations in human visual cortex
Sirawaj Itthipuripat, Thomas C Sprague, John T Serences
bioRxiv 391193; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/391193

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Google Plus One

Subject Area

  • Neuroscience
Subject Areas
All Articles
  • Animal Behavior and Cognition (4843)
  • Biochemistry (10771)
  • Bioengineering (8031)
  • Bioinformatics (27249)
  • Biophysics (13959)
  • Cancer Biology (11108)
  • Cell Biology (16026)
  • Clinical Trials (138)
  • Developmental Biology (8770)
  • Ecology (13266)
  • Epidemiology (2067)
  • Evolutionary Biology (17338)
  • Genetics (11678)
  • Genomics (15902)
  • Immunology (11011)
  • Microbiology (26033)
  • Molecular Biology (10625)
  • Neuroscience (56450)
  • Paleontology (417)
  • Pathology (1729)
  • Pharmacology and Toxicology (2999)
  • Physiology (4539)
  • Plant Biology (9614)
  • Scientific Communication and Education (1612)
  • Synthetic Biology (2682)
  • Systems Biology (6967)
  • Zoology (1508)