Whaley, Meagan Lee2018-06-192018-06-192013-02Whaley, Meagan Lee. "Applying the Short-Time Direct Directed Transfer Function to Human Electrocorticographic Recordings from a Language Task." (2013) <a href="https://hdl.handle.net/1911/102214">https://hdl.handle.net/1911/102214</a>.https://hdl.handle.net/1911/102214This work was also published as a Rice University thesis/dissertation: http://hdl.handle.net/1911/71483This thesis applied the short-time direct directed transfer function (SdDTF) to time series data recordings from intracranial electrodes that measure the brain's electrical activity to determine the causal influences that occurred between brain regions during a speech production task. The combination of high temporal and spatial resolution of the electrocorticography (ECoG) recordings directly from the cortex render these measurements of brain activity desirable, particularly when analyzing the fine cognitive dynamics involved in word generation. This research applied a new method to characterize the SdDTF results by compressing across time and high gamma frequencies, generating adjacency matrices, and graphing them to visualize the influences between anatomical regions over the duration of the entire task. This consolidated SdDTF analysis technique allowed for data from a total of seven patients to be combined, generating results which were consistent with current speech production models. The results from this thesis contribute to the expansion of language research by identifying areas relevant to word generation, providing information that will help surgeons avoid irreparable damage to crucial cortex during brain surgery.71 ppengTechnical reportTR13-02