Abstract

The locations of active brain areas can be estimated from the magnetic field the neural current sources produce. In this work we study a visualization method of magnetoencephalographic data that is based on minimum[symbol: see text] (1)-norm estimates. The method can represent several local or distributed sources and does not need explicit a priori information. We evaluated the performance of the method using simulation studies. In a situation resembling typical magnetoencephalographic measurement, the mean estimated source strength exceeded baseline level up to 2 cm from the simulated point-like source. The method can also visualize several sources, activated simultaneously or in a sequence, which we demonstrated by analyzing magnetic responses associated with sensory stimulation and a picture naming task.