Single-subject EEG measurement of interhemispheric transfer-time for the in-vivo estimation of axonal morphology

Abstract

Assessing axonal morphology in-vivo opens new avenues for the combined study of brain structure and function. A novel approach has recently been introduced to estimate the morphology of axonal fibers from the combination of MRI data and EEG measures of the interhemispheric transfer time (IHTT). In the original study, the IHTT measures were computed from EEG data averaged across a group, leading to bias of the axonal morphology estimates. Here, we seek to estimate axonal morphology from individual measures of IHTT, obtained from EEG data acquired in a visual evoked potential experiment. Subject-specific IHTTs are computed in a data-driven framework with minimal a priori constraints, based on the maximal peak of neural responses to visual stimuli within periods of statistically significant evoked activity in the inverse solution space. The subject-specific IHTT estimates ranged from 8 to 29 ms except for one participant and the between-session variability was comparable to the differences in IHTT between subjects. The scale parameter of the axonal radius distribution, computed from the IHTT estimates and the MRI data, ranged from 0 to 0.79 m. The change in axonal g-ratio with axonal radius ranged from 0.62 to 0.81 m-. The single-subject measurement of the IHTT yields estimates of axonal morphology that are consistent with histological values. However, improvement of the repeatability of the IHTT estimates is required to improve the specificity of the single-subject axonal morphology estimates.