Towards a more objective use of resting-state EEG microstate findings across studies

Abstract

Over the last decade, EEG resting-state microstate analysis has evolved from a niche existence to a widely used and well-accepted methodology. The rapidly increasing body of empirical findings started to yield overarching patterns of associations of biological and psychological states and traits with particular microstate classes. However, currently, this cross-referencing among apparently similar microstate classes of different studies was typically done by “eye-balling” of printed template maps by the individual authors and lacked a systematic procedure. To improve this situation, we present an effort to systematically collect the actual data of template maps from as many published studies as possible and present them in their entity as a matrix of spatial similarity. In addition, the tool allows the import of novel template maps from ongoing studies and the systematic extraction of the findings associated with particular microstate maps in the literature. Once made available to the community, we hope that this tool will be useful in coming to a more comprehensive, objective, and overarching representation of microstate findings.