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. 2023 Dec 14:17:1306120.
doi: 10.3389/fnins.2023.1306120. eCollection 2023.

Causal link between prefrontal cortex and EEG microstates: evidence from patients with prefrontal lesion

Zongya Zhao  1   2   3   4   5 , Xiangying Ran  1   2   3   4 , Shiyang Lv  1   2   3   4 , Junming Wang  1   2   3   4 , Mengyue Qiu  1   2   3   4 , Chang Wang  1   2   3   4 , Yongtao Xu  1   2   3   4 , Xiao Guo  1   2   3   4 , Zhixian Gao  1   2   3   4 , Junlin Mu  6 , Yi Yu  1   2   3   4
Affiliations

Causal link between prefrontal cortex and EEG microstates: evidence from patients with prefrontal lesion

Zongya Zhao et al. Front Neurosci. .

Abstract

Introduction: At present, elucidating the cortical origin of EEG microstates is a research hotspot in the field of EEG. Previous studies have suggested that the prefrontal cortex is closely related to EEG microstate C and D, but whether there is a causal link between the prefrontal cortex and microstate C or D remains unclear.

Methods: In this study, pretrial EEG data were collected from ten patients with prefrontal lesions (mainly located in inferior and middle frontal gyrus) and fourteen matched healthy controls, and EEG microstate analysis was applied.

Results: Our results showed that four classical EEG microstate topographies were obtained in both groups, but microstate C topography in patient group was obviously abnormal. Compared to healthy controls, the average coverage and occurrence of microstate C significantly reduced. In addition, the transition probability from microstate A to C and from microstate B to C in patient group was significantly lower than those of healthy controls.

Discussion: The above results demonstrated that the damage of prefrontal cortex especially inferior and middle frontal gyrus could lead to abnormalities in the spatial distribution and temporal dynamics of microstate C not D, showing that there is a causal link between the inferior and middle frontal gyrus and the microstate C. The significance of our findings lies in providing new evidence for elucidating the cortical origin of microstate C.

Keywords: EEG; causal link; microstate; prefrontal cortex; prefrontal lesion.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Flow chart of EEG data pre-processing and microstate analysis.
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Topographic maps of four types of EEG microstates (microstates A–D) in ctrl and pfc group. The asterisk showed that there existed a significant difference for the corresponding microstate topography between two groups (P < 0.05).
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
Comparison of three microstate temporal parameters between pfc and ctrl group: (A) duration, (B) coverage, (C) occurrence. “**” and “*” stands for Pfdr < 0.01 and Pfdr < 0.05, respectively.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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