Investigation of cooperative cortical dynamics by multivariate autoregressive modeling of event-related local field potentials

To explore the operation of large-scale networks in the cerebral cortex, we sought to measure the functional interdependence of event-related local fi eld potentials (LFPs) from different cortical areas in macaque monkeys perf orming a visuomotor pattern discrimination task. To track the transformatio n of functional interdependence accompanying rapid changes in cognitive sta te, we developed a method for spectral coherence analysis using multivariat e autoregressive (MVAR) models of short-windowed LFP time series. MVAR mode ling overcomes problems associated with direct coherence analysis of short- windowed data. Coherence and phase are shown to vary during task processing with spatial location, processing stage, and stimulus and response conditi ons. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.