5/8/13

Intro to Signal Processing

Session 3: TimeFrequency Analyses
Melissa Pangelinan, Ph.D.

Overview for Session 3

Purpose: To discuss and evaluate the steps in timefrequency analysis pipelines

Part 1: Review of frequency-domain data processing
pipeline
Comparing data before/after different types of noise reduction
steps

Part 2: Time-Frequency Analyses

Methods for assessing changes in frequency in time

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Resources

TIME - FREQUENCY ANALYSES

EEGlab tutorial:
http://sccn.ucsd.edu/wiki/Chapter_11:_Time/
Frequency_decomposition
http://www.mathworks.com/help/signal/
index.html
http://www.mathworks.com/help/wavelet/
index.html

Part 1: Review of
Frequency-Domain
Analyses

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Fourier Transforms

A type of pattern classification

How much does the raw signal resemble sine/cosine
functions of particular frequencies (cycles/second or Hz)

Examine data via spectral windows or snapshots

of frequency content across full data and average
all windows
Small windows provide more reliable spectral estimation,
but may not be long enough to capture slow frequencies

Fourier Transforms
F(! )=

"
!"

f (t)e! j! dt

Fourier transform = Sum of the signal (over ALL

time) multiplied by complex exponential
Sum of real (magnitude) and imaginary (phase)
sinusoidal components
F() = Fourier coefficients that summarizes the
similarity between the template and signal
Multiply the original signal by the F() to get the
constituent components

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EEGLab T-F Analyses

You CAN change the properties for FFT in EEGlab!

Spectral and scalp map options: winsize, 256, nfft, 256,
overlap, 128
Call spectopo() in the command window

Create a scalp map of the time-frequency

changes using Tftopo()

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Questions from the previous

material???

Part 2: Time-Frequency
Analyses

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Temporal Dynamics of Brain

Oscillations

FFTs provide a measure of frequency content of

stationary signals
Usually windows ~ 1 second are necessary to resolve slowest
frequencies and provide a resolution into1Hz bins
Provides a stable measure of temporally-fixed features of
brain oscillations
Does not fully take advantage of time-sensitivity of EEG!
Ignores data that might be transiently changing (i.e., in response
to an event)

Temporal Dynamics of Brain

Oscillations

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Why Are Time-Frequency

Analyses Useful?

Transient changes in brain oscillations are related to

different neural processes
Synchronization of transient changes in brain
oscillations may contribute to ERP peaks!
Ask yourself: How stable is the phenomenon of
interest? Do you expect abrupt changes in
frequency?

Band-Filter Approaches
Task-related power change:
PSD during task PSD at rest/baseline
PSD computed from a time period still not very sensitive to
discrete changes in frequency

Filter-based analyses of signal changes in time

Apply a band pass filter on time-series data, epoch time-series
data with respect to a baseline
Interpreted as task-related synchrony/desynchrony
depending on the frequency band
Reduced alpha = desynchrony
Reduced beta = synchrony

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Practice Problems

1) Apply an alpha (8 12 Hz) band pass filter using

EEGlab to the GoNogo data sets
Note: You need to separate the go from the nogo
conditions

2) Plot the ERPs and determine if there are changes

in the waveform between the two conditions

Wavelets vs. FFT

From Delorme EEGLab workshop

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Wavelets vs. FFT

From Delorme EEGLab workshop

FFTs have good frequency but poor time resolution

Wavelets have good temporal but poor frequency resolution

Wavelets Continued
Select mother wavelet function
Wavelet is scaled/dilated to modulate the time and frequency
resolution
Filter bank

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Wavelets Continued
Wavelet packets
J = scale parameter
N = frequency parameter (depth position)

Practice Problems

3) Use the MATLAB help to determine which wavelets

are available.
Modify the sample code to determine how these wavelets
change the time-frequency estimation

4) Apply the wavelet transformation to epoched

GoNogo data to investigate differences in the timefrequency content of these signals
Is this similar or different than the output from EEGlab using the
ERPS functions?

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Short-Time Fourier Transforms

F(!,t)=

"
!"

f (t)w(t ! " )e! j!t dt

Modification of the original Fourier transform.

Based on a Gaussian window function centered around t= 0,
= size of the window in time
Still limited in precision because it depends on the size of the
window

Short-Time Fourier Transforms

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Practice Problems

5) Modify the parameters for the spectogram code

to determine the effect of each parameter on the
frequency or time resolution of signal 2.
6) Create spectograms of the Artifacts or GoNogo
data sets
If you are using the continuous Artifacts data set, make sure to select
a section of data to examine. Maybe find a time in which the
frequency content shifts abruptly.

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