Exploring the relationship between N170’s amplitudes and the activation of the picture visual stimuli using general linear model

Many studies have reported that discrete cortical areas in the ventral temporal cortex of humans were correlated with the perception of pictures visual stimuli. Moreover, event-related potentials caused by different kinds of picture stimuli showed different amplitude levels of N170 which was maximal over occipito-temporal electrode sites. However, the phenomenon which is mentioned above may be correlated with some local bold signal change, and where is the change happened is still unclear. Recently, research for EEG-fMRI has been widely performed through General Linear Model (GLM) to find the relationship between some feature of the ERP component and the activation of local brain area. In our study, we dealt with the simultaneously recorded EEG-fMRI data of picture stimuli to find the correlation between the change of the N170’s amplitude and the BOLD signal. The amplitudes of the N170 component from the average ERPs of 4 different kinds of picture stimuli were extracted from the EEG data and the activation map for the same stimuli was provided based on the fMRI data. GLM was performed including regressors that could represent the change of the N170’s amplitude. Our result showed that fusiform and occipital gyrus were activated by the parametric design and were overlapped by the activation map of the common fMRI design. Thus we might infer that these regions had relationship with the change of the amplitudes of N170. Our research may contribute to location of the source of N170 and bring a new approach for the parameter design of the fMRI signal in EEG-fMRI analysis.