AN EXTENDED DIFFERENCE OF COHERENCE TEST FOR COMPARING AND COMBINING SEVERAL INDEPENDENT COHERENCE ESTIMATES - THEORY AND APPLICATION TO THE STUDY OF MOTOR UNITS AND PHYSIOLOGICAL TREMOR
Am. Amjad et al., AN EXTENDED DIFFERENCE OF COHERENCE TEST FOR COMPARING AND COMBINING SEVERAL INDEPENDENT COHERENCE ESTIMATES - THEORY AND APPLICATION TO THE STUDY OF MOTOR UNITS AND PHYSIOLOGICAL TREMOR, Journal of neuroscience methods, 73(1), 1997, pp. 69-79
Recently there has been an increase in the use of spectral methods for
the analysis of experimental data. These analytical methods allow the
study of interactions between simultaneously recorded signals and are
particularly suited to the study of systems displaying rhythmic behav
iour. A useful parameter in this context is the coherence function whi
ch provides a bounded measure of linear association between two signal
s. In this report we introduce two new techniques for dealing with an
arbitrary number of independent coherence estimates. The first techniq
ue provides a test to compare the coherence estimates for statisticall
y significant differences. The second allows the original coherence es
timates to be combined, or 'pooled' into a single representative estim
ate. These two measures, taken together, provide a powerful tool for c
haracterising and summarising the correlations within data sets. Appli
cations of the techniques are illustrated by analysing the interaction
s between single motor unit discharges and finger tremor, and between
pairs of motor unit discharges in human subjects. (C) 1997 Elsevier Sc
ience B.V.