CROSS-SPECTRAL ANALYSIS OF TREMOR TIME SERIES

Abstract

We discuss cross-spectral analysis and report applications for the investigation of human tremors. For the physiological tremor in healthy subjects, the analysis enables to determine the resonant contribution to the oscillation and allows to test for a contribution of reflexes to this tremor. Comparing the analysis of the relation between the tremor of both hands in normal subjects and subjects with a rare abnormal organization of certain neural pathways proves the involvement of central structures in enhanced physiological tremor. The relation between the left and the right side of the body in pathological tremor shows a specific difference between orthostatic and all other forms of tremor. An investigation of EEG and tremor in patients suffering from Parkinson's disease reveals the tremor-correlated cortical activity. Finally, the general issue of interpreting the results of methods designed for the analysis of bivariate processes when applied to multivariate processes is considered. We discuss and apply partial cross-spectral analysis in the frame of graphical models as an extention of bivariate cross-spectral analysis for the multivariate case.