Study of Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder Using the Method of Functional Tomography Based On Magnetic Encephalography Data

Abstract

New method for the magnetic encephalography data analysis was proposed, making it possible to transform multichannel time series into the spatial structure of the human brain activity. In this paper we applied this method to the analysis of magnetic encephalograms, obtained from subjects with attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder. We have considered the experimental data, obtained with 275-channel magnetic encephalographs in McGill University and Montreal University. Magnetic encephalograms of the brain spontaneous activity were registered for 5 minutes in magnetically shielded room. Detailed multichannel spectra were obtained by the Fourier transform of the whole time series. For all spectral components, the inverse problem was solved in elementary current dipole model and the functional structure of the brain activity was calculated in the broad frequency band 0.3-50 Hz. It was found that frequency band relations are different in different experiments. We proposed to use these relations by the summary electric power produced by the sources in selected frequency band. The delta rhythm in frequency band 0.3 to 4 Hz was studied in detail. It was found, that many delta rhythm dipoles were localized outside the brain, and their spectrum consists of the heartbeat harmonics. It was concluded that in experiments considered, the delta rhythm represents the vascular activity of the head. To study the spatial distribution of all rhythms from theta to gamma the partial spectra of the brain divisions were calculated. The partial spectrum includes all frequencies produced by the dipole sources located in the region of brain selected at the magnetic resonance image. The method can be further applied to study encephalograms in various psychic disorders.