• 10.3.

CONTENTS THE BRAIN

• 10.3.4

: EEG
FMRI
THE BRAIN
• From the system level perspective, the brain is organized into
different parts with specific properties and roles that are wired
together in a specific way to make the brain a multi-task complex
system.
• The largest part of human brain is called cerebrum and is known to
be associated with higher order functions, including thinking,
planning, decision making, perceiving, understanding language, in
general, to control our voluntary behaviors. The cerebrum is divided
into two hemispheres, namely, the right hemisphere and the left
hemisphere.
• The outermost layer of the cerebrum is covered by a sheet
of tissue called the cerebral cortex. Due to its gray color,
the cerebral cortex is mostly referred to as gray matter.
More than two-thirds of cerebral cortex is folded into
grooves which causes the human brain to have wrinkled
appearance. Because of these grooves, the brain’s surface
area is effectively increased such that many more neurons
can be included.
• To understand the function of the cerebral cortex, it is
often divided into various zones:
• Frontal lobe: is responsible for motor
movements and control, higher cognitive skills, such
as thinking, planning, and decision making,
organizing; and for many aspects of personality
and emotions.
• Parietal lobe: is responsible for sensory processes,
attention, and language. Damage to the left side of
the parietal lobe can result in difficulty in
understanding spoken and/or written language. If
the right side is injured, the ability to navigate spaces
(even familiar ones) may be impaired.
• Occipital lobe: is responsible for visual information
processing, including recognition of shapes and
colors.
• Temporal lobe: is responsible for auditory
information processing and sensory information
fusion/ integration. It is believed that the temporal
lobe plays a role in short term memory and in the
learned emotional responses, respectively, through
its hippocampal formation and its amygdala.
• The mentioned structures make up the forebrain. However, there are
three other key parts in forebrain:
o Basal ganglia (responsible for coordinating the muscle movements and
rewarding the useful behaviors).
o Thalamus (responsible for relaying the sensory information on to the
cerebral cortex).
o Hypothalamus (which controls the circadian rhythm, appetites, defensive
and reproductive behaviors).
• The midbrain plays a significant role in visual and auditory reflexes and in
relaying the sensory information to the thalamus.
• The hindbrain controls respiration, heart rhythms, and blood glucose
levels. A major part of the hindbrain is the cerebellum which helps
control movement and cognitive processes that require precise timing.
EEG
(ELECTRONCEPHALOGRAPHY)

This Photo by Unknown author is licensed under CC BY-ND.

 • An electroencephalogram (EEG)
is a test that measures electrical
activity in the brain using small,
metal discs (electrodes)
attached to the scalp and
electroencephalography is the
What is EEG? study of the electrical brain
activity. Brain cells
communicate via electrical
impulses and are active all the
time, even during asleep. This
activity shows up as wavy lines
on an EEG recording

This Photo by Unknown author is licensed under CC BY.

 BRIEF HISTORY:
• Richard Caton, an English scientist, is credited with discovering the electrical
properties of the brain, by recording electrical activity from the brains of animals
using a sensitive galvanometer, noting fluctuations in activity during sleep and
absence of activity following death.
• Hans Berger, a German psychiatrist, recorded the first human EEGs in 1924.
• In 1934, Fisher and Lowenback first demonstrated epileptiform spikes.
• In 1935, Gibbs, Davis, and Lennox described interictal epileptiform discharges and
3-Hz spike-wave patterns during clinical seizures.
• In 1936, Gibbs and Jasper described focal interictal spikes. The first clinical EEG
laboratories were established in the United States in the 1930s and 40s. In 1947,
the American EEG Society, later the American Clinical Neurophysiology Society,
was founded.

This Photo by Unknown author is licensed under CC BY.

 BRAIN WAVES:
• Electrical activity emanating from the brain is displayed in the
form of brainwaves. There are four categories of these
brainwaves, ranging from the most activity to the least activity.

This Photo by Unknown author is licensed under CC BY.

BETA WAVES:
• When the brain is aroused and actively engaged
in mental activities, it generates beta waves.
These beta waves are of relatively low
amplitude and are the fastest of the four
different brainwaves. The frequency of beta
waves ranges from 15 to 40 cycles a second.
Beta waves are characteristics of a strongly
engaged mind. A person in active conversation
would be in beta. A debater would be in high
beta. A person making a speech, or a teacher, or
a talk show host would all be in beta when they
are engaged in their work.
This Photo by Unknown author is licensed under CC BY.
ALPHA WAVES:
• Where beta represents arousal, alpha
represents non-arousal. Alpha brainwaves are
slower, and higher in amplitude. Their
frequency ranges from 9 to 14 cycles per
second. A person who has completed a task and
sits down to rest is often in an alpha state. A
person who takes time out to reflect or
meditate is usually in an alpha state. A person
who takes a break from a conference and walks
in the garden is often in an alpha state.

This Photo by Unknown author is licensed under CC BY.

THETA WAVES:
• The next state, theta brainwaves, are typically of
even greater amplitude and slower frequency. This
frequency range is normally between 5 and 8 cycles
a second. A person who has taken time off from a
task and begins to daydream is often in a theta
brainwave state. Individuals who run outdoors
often are in the state of mental relaxation that is
slower than alpha and when in theta, they are
prone to a flow of ideas. This can also occur in the
shower or tub or even while shaving or brushing
your hair. It is a state where tasks become so
automatic that you can mentally disengage from
them. It is typically a very positive mental state.

This Photo by Unknown author is licensed under CC BY.

DELTA WAVES:
• The final brainwave state is delta. Here the brainwaves
are of the greatest amplitude and slowest frequency.
They typically center around a range of 1.5 to 4 cycles per
second. They never go down to zero because that would
mean that you were brain dead. But deep dreamless
sleep would take you down to the lowest frequency.
Typically, 2 to 3 cycles a second. When we go to bed and
read for a few minutes before attempting sleep, we are
likely to be in low beta. When we put the book down,
turn off the lights and close our eyes, our brainwaves will
descend from beta, to alpha, to theta and finally, when
we fall asleep, to delta.

This Photo by Unknown author is licensed under CC BY.

 How is it used?:
• The electrodes placed on the scalp surface. For
faster application, electrodes are mounted in
elastic caps similar to bathing caps, ensuring
that the data can be collected from identical
scalp positions across all respondents. As the
voltage fluctuations measured at the
electrodes are very small, the recorded data is
digitized and sent to an amplifier. The
amplified data can then be displayed as a
sequence of voltage values.
• Price differences in EEG systems are typically
due to the number of electrodes, the quality
of the digitization, the quality of the amplifier,
and the number of snapshots the device can
take per second (this is the sampling rate in
Hz).

This Photo by Unknown author is licensed under CC BY. This Photo by Unknown author is licensed under CC BY.
 • The main use of an EEG is to detect
and investigate epilepsy, a condition that
causes repeated seizures. An EEG will help
your doctor identify the type of epilepsy
you have, what may be triggering your
seizures and how best to treat you.
• Less often, an EEG may be used to
Why is EEG investigate other problems, such as:
done? • Dementia
• Head injury and concussion
• Brain tumors
• Encephalitis (brain inflammation)
• sleep disorders, such as sleep apnea.

This Photo by Unknown author is licensed under CC BY.

 FMRI
(Functional magnetic resonance imaging)

This Photo by Unknown author is licensed under CC BY-ND.

• Functional magnetic resonance
imaging, or FMRI, works by detecting
the changes in blood oxygenation and
flow that occur in response to neural
activity when a brain area is more
active it consumes more oxygen and
to meet this increased demand blood
WHAT IS
flow increases to the active area. FMRI FMRI?
can be used to produce activation
maps showing which parts of the brain
are involved in a particular mental
process.
 • The development of FMRI in the 1990s,
generally credited to Seiji Ogawa and Ken
Kwong, is the latest in long line of
innovations, including positron emission
tomography (PET) and near infrared
spectroscopy (NIRS), which use blood flow
and oxygen metabolism to infer brain
HISTORY activity. As a brain imaging technique FMRI
has several significant advantages:
• It is non-invasive and doesn’t involve
radiation, making it safe for the subject.
• It has excellent spatial and good temporal
resolution.
• It is easy for the experimenter to use.
 • FMRI is a special type of magnetic scan.
• The cylindrical tube of an MRI scanner houses a very
powerful electro-magnet. A typical research scanner
(such as the FMRIB Centre scanner) has a field strength
of 3 tesla (T), about 50,000 times greater than the
Earth’s field.
• The magnetic field inside the scanner affects the
magnetic nuclei of atoms. Normally atomic nuclei are
randomly oriented but under the influence of a
HOW DOES IT magnetic field the nuclei become aligned with the
direction of the field. The stronger the field the greater
the degree of alignment.
WORK? • When pointing in the same direction, the tiny magnetic
signals from individual nuclei add up coherently
resulting in a signal that is large enough to measure. In
FMRI it is the magnetic signal from hydrogen nuclei in
water (H2O) that is detected.
• The key to MRI is that the signal from hydrogen nuclei
varies in strength depending on the surroundings. This
provides a means of discriminating between grey
matter, white matter and cerebral spinal fluid in
structural images of the brain.
 What is measured?
• Oxygen is delivered to neurons by hemoglobin in capillary red blood cells.
When neuronal activity increases there is an increased demand for oxygen
and the local response is an increase in blood flow to regions of increased
neural activity.
• Hemoglobin is diamagnetic when oxygenated but paramagnetic when
deoxygenated. This difference in magnetic properties leads to small
differences in the MR signal of blood depending on the degree of oxygenation.
Since blood oxygenation varies according to the levels of neural activity these
differences can be used to detect brain activity. This form of MRI is known as
blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) imaging.
• One point to note is the direction of
oxygenation change with increased activity. You
might expect blood oxygenation to decrease
with activation, but the reality is a little more
complex.
• There is a momentary decrease in blood
oxygenation immediately after neural activity
increases, known as the “initial dip” in the
hemodynamic response. This is followed by a
period where the blood flow increases, not just
to a level where oxygen demand is met but
overcompensating for the increased demand.
• This means the blood oxygenation increases
following neural activation. The blood flow
peaks after around 6 seconds and then falls
back to baseline, often accompanied by a "post-
stimulus undershoot"
• This image is the result of the simplest
kind of FMRI experiment. While lying in
the MRI scanner the subject watched a
screen which alternated between
showing a visual stimulus and being dark
every 30 second. Meanwhile the MRI
scanner tracked the signal throughout the
brain.
• In brain areas responding to the visual
stimulus, you would expect the signal to
go up and down as the stimulus is turned
on and off, albeit blurred slightly by the
delay in the blood flow response. The
'activity' in a voxel (the smallest unit in a
three-dimensional image) is defined as
how closely the time-course of the signal
from that voxel matches the expected
time-course.
 Applications:
• MRI-guided neurosurgery.
• Mapping spontaneous brain activity.
• Functional characterization of
disease.
• Understanding disease symptoms.
• Pre-symptomatic diagnosis of
disease.
• Pharmacological fMRI.
• Recovery of brain function: plasticity
in disease.
• Neurobiologically informed
neurorehabilitation.
REFERENCES:
• PHSIOLOGY FOR ENGINEERS
• https://imotions.com/blog/learning/research-fundamentals/what-is-eeg/#eeg-measur
es
• https://www.medindia.net/patients/patientinfo/functional-magnetic-resonance-imagi
ng.htm
• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK390348/
• https://www.ai.rug.nl/minds/uploads/Chapter%204_%20EEG_Introduction.pdf