Influence of white matter anisotropic conductivity on EEG source localization: Comparison to fMRI in human primary visual cortex

Objective: The goal of this study was to experimentally investigate the influence of the anisotropy of white matter (WM) conductivity on EEG source localization. Methods: Visual evoked potentials (VEP) and fMRI data were recorded from three human subjects presented with identical visual stimuli. A finite element method was used to solve the EEG forward problems based on both anisotropic and isotropic head models, and single-dipole source localization was subsequently performed to localize the source underlying the N75 VEP component. Results: The averaged distances of the localized N75 dipole locations in V1 between the isotropic and anisotropic head models ranged from 0 to 6.22 +/- 2.83 mm. The distances between the localized dipole positions and the centers of the fMRI V1 activations were slightly smaller when using an anisotropic model (7.49 +/- 1.35-15.70 +/- 8.60 mm) than when using an isotropic model (7.65 +/- 1.30-15.31 +/- 9.18 mm). Conclusions: Anisotropic models incorporating realistic WM anisotropic conductivity distributions do not substantially improve the accuracy of EEG dipole localization in the primary visual cortex using experimental data obtained using visual stimulation. Significance: The present study represents the first attempt using a human experimental approach to assess the effects of WM anisotropy on EEG source analysis. (c) 2009 International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.