Computational and Mathematical Methods in Medicine
Volume 2012 (2012), Article ID 239210, 13 pages
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2012/239210
Review Article

Inferring Functional Neural Connectivity with Phase Synchronization Analysis: A Review of Methodology

Junfeng Sun,1 Zhijun Li,2 and Shanbao Tong1

1Med-X Research Institute, School of Biomedical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200030, China
2Department of Automation, School of Electronic Information and Electrical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China

Received 25 November 2011; Accepted 31 January 2012

Academic Editor: Dimitris Kugiumtzis

Copyright © 2012 Junfeng Sun et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Functional neural connectivity is drawing increasing attention in neuroscience research. To infer functional connectivity from observed neural signals, various methods have been proposed. Among them, phase synchronization analysis is an important and effective one which examines the relationship of instantaneous phase between neural signals but neglecting the influence of their amplitudes. In this paper, we review the advances in methodologies of phase synchronization analysis. In particular, we discuss the definitions of instantaneous phase, the indexes of phase synchronization and their significance test, the issues that may affect the detection of phase synchronization and the extensions of phase synchronization analysis. In practice, phase synchronization analysis may be affected by observational noise, insufficient samples of the signals, volume conduction, and reference in recording neural signals. We make comments and suggestions on these issues so as to better apply phase synchronization analysis to inferring functional connectivity from neural signals.