Functional imaging with low resolution brain electromagnetic tomography (LORETA) : review, new comparisons, and new validation

This paper provides a review of several recent publications that have successfully used the functional brain imaging method known as LORETA. Special emphasis is given to: (1) the electrophysiological and neuroanatomical basis of the method, (2) the localization and spatial blurring properties of the method, (3) the experimental validation of the method with real human data, and (4) its limitations. Papers that criticize LORETA are briefly discussed. Two new results are presented. Firstly, LORETA is compared with a recently published tomography (Dale et al., Neuron 26:55-67, 2000), in terms of localization and spatial blurring properties. The results demonstrate by far, that LORETA is the method of choice, especially when the measurements are contaminated with noise. For the sake of reproducible research, all the material (data, program code, and executables) used in the comparative study is available upon request to the corresponding author. The second result consists of the analysis of a face perception event related potential experiment. LORETA was used to test for significant activation in the first 500 milliseconds after stimulus onset. High time resolution activation signals can be computed with this new statistical procedure. Activation of Brodmann areas (BA) 17/18 and of the right fusiform gyrus (BA 37, the “face processing” area) was demonstrated. These results provide further validation for LORETA.

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