Advisory Committee Chair
Jerzy P Szaflarski
Advisory Committee Members
Allan C Dobbins
Timothy J Gawne
Kristina M Visscher
Document Type
Thesis
Date of Award
2017
Degree Name by School
Master of Biomedical Engineering (MBE) School of Engineering
Abstract
Reports of the relationship between the default mode network (DMN) and alpha power are conflicting in the literature. Our goal for this study was to assess this relationship by analyzing concurrently obtained EEG/fMRI data using hypothesis-independent methods. To accomplish this, we collected fMRI and EEG data during eyes-closed rest in 20 participants aged 19-37 (10 females) and performed independent component analysis on the fMRI data and a Hamming windowed Fast Fourier Transform on the EEG data. We correlated fMRI fluctuations in the DMN with alpha power. Of the six independent components (ICs) found to have significant relationships with alpha, four contained DMN-associated regions: one IC was positively correlated with alpha power while all others were negatively correlated. Furthermore, two ICs with opposite relationships with alpha had overlapping voxels in the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) and posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) suggesting that subpopulations of neurons within these classic nodes within the DMN may have different relationships to alpha power. Different parts of the DMN exhibit divergent relationships to alpha power. Our results highlight the relationship between DMN activity and alpha power, indicating that networks, such as the DMN, may have subcomponents that exhibit different behaviors.
Recommended Citation
Bowman, Anthony Dean, "Alpha Rhythm And The Default Mode Network: An Eeg/Fmri Study" (2017). All ETDs from UAB. 1228.
https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/etd-collection/1228