Month: April 2009

A discussion on LORETA software use and licensing.

April 30, 2009
Leslie Sherlin, PhD

There recently has been some discussion regarding the use of low resolution brain electromagnetic tomography or LORETA, sLORETA and eLORETA. I felt compelled to make a few comments regarding this since there may be some confusion of how LORETA works and the usage of LORETA as an inverse solution specifically the licensing agreements of the KEY Institute for Brain-Mind Research at the University Hospital of Psychiatry, Zurich.

My intention is to very briefly explain the license agreement so that the end user can be informed. I’ll do so in an informal way by telling the story of the implementation of these methods from my perspective. For a more formal description of the use of LORETA families and some examples you can see a recently written chapter 4 by myself (Sherlin, 2009) in the latest edition of the book Introduction to Quantitative EEG and Neurofeedback edited Budzynski, Budzynski, Evans & Arbarbanel.

In 2000 I had the great privilege to visit with Roberto Pascual-Marqui PhD, the developer of the LORETA family, with my colleague and fellow student Marco Congedo. At this time the LORETA-Key software (Pascual-Marqui, 1994, 1999), had not been widely distributed and utilized in the United States. Marco had significant interest in using LORETA for visualizing brain activity and for exploring newer methods for neurofeedback and had many questions for Roberto. So upon the invitation of Roberto, Marco found funding to travel to Zurich and learn the details from the creator and I happen to be standing in the right spot at the right time. Roberto Pascual-Marqui trained us extensively on how to use his software, named LORETA-Key, which had been already released as free academic software. The LORETA-Key software is a collection of independent modules that the user must run in sequence in order to get from raw EEG to LORETA images.

Read more

Neurofeedback Foundation Award 2009

In his role as the Managing Director of the Foundation for Neurofeedback and
Applied Neuroscience John Fisher recently announced the Foundation’s selection of a recipient of the Neurofeedback Foundation Award.

The Foundation gives an award to the author(s) of the publication which has
“contributed the most to furthering the field of neurofeedback” during the
past year. Past recipients have included Drs Rob Coben, John Gruzelier, as
well as Johan Levesque and Mario Beauregard.

This year the Foundation has chosen Professor Dr. Juri Kropotov as recipient
of this years award, based on his book and the body of work Juri has
contributed over the years.

This award selection was announced recently at the EEG Spectrum Clinical
Interchange Conference in Los Angeles.  The award includes a gorgeous plaque
as well as an honorarium.

We salute both the Foundation for helping promote the fiend of NF, as well
as all the award recipients for their publications and the substantial
contributions they all have given to our field.

Sensory + Motor Homunculus

The homunculus is a spatial representation of the cortical topography of the
somato-motor strip which is dedicated to either motor or sensory function.
The two have different structural details, since there are sensory inputs
from non-motor areas.

Some people have tried to create 3D creatures which show the spatial
distortions, with the enlarged surface proportionate to the motor expression or sensory sensitivity, with varied results.

See if you can identify the differences between the sensory and motor
version, and also critique the accuracy of the artist’s rendition of these
various versions.

Have fun with the exercise!

Jay