Brain Functional Connectivity Analysis Through Phase Synchronization of EEG channels: Application in the Analysis of Burst-Suppression Patterns in Newborn EEGs

This paper presents a new method for studying brain functional connectivity using multichannel scalp EEG signals. The proposed method uses the values of pair-wise phase synchrony between different EEG channels as a measure to quantify the strength of the connection between different parts of the brain. Using these values, the resulted brain networks are visualized by the use of graph theory. The method is then deployed to explore brain functional connectivity in newborn EEG signals in the presence of burst and suppression patterns. The results show that the brain networks are sparser in the presence of burst patterns compared to suppression patterns. They also show that the links in brain networks representing suppression patterns have greater strength. To validate the proposed method, the graphs describing burst and suppression patterns are classified. The results show that the brain networks for burst and suppression patterns are statistically different. The findings of this study show that the proposed method can be used to study brain functional connectivity in the presence of other abnor-malities.