Solved problems for Granger causality in neuroscience: a response to Stokes and Purdon

Barnett, Lionel, Barrett, Adam and Seth, Anil (2018) Solved problems for Granger causality in neuroscience: a response to Stokes and Purdon. NeuroImage. ISSN 1053-8119

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Abstract

Granger-Geweke causality (GGC) is a powerful and popular method for identifying directed functional (‘causal’) connectivity in neuroscience. In a recent paper, Stokes and Purdon (2017b) raise several concerns about its use. They make two primary claims: (1) that GGC estimates may be severely biased or of high variance, and (2) that GGC fails to reveal the full structural/causal mechanisms of a system. However, these claims rest, respectively, on an incomplete evaluation of the literature, and a misconception about what GGC can be said to measure. Here we explain how existing approaches resolve the first issue, and discuss the frequently-misunderstood distinction between functional and effective neural connectivity which underlies Stokes and Purdon's second claim.

Item Type: Article
Schools and Departments: School of Engineering and Informatics > Informatics
Research Centres and Groups: Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science
Subjects: R Medicine > RC Internal medicine > RC0321 Neurosciences. Biological psychiatry. Neuropsychiatry
Depositing User: Marianne Cole
Date Deposited: 20 Jun 2018 14:01
Last Modified: 13 Jul 2018 13:09
URI: http://srodev.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/76641

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Project NameSussex Project NumberFunderFunder Ref
Explaining Consciousness as Neural Dynamical ComplexityG1201EPSRC-ENGINEERING & PHYSICAL SCIENCES RESEARCH COUNCILEP/L005131/1