Estimating coupling direction between neuronal populations with permutation conditional mutual information

To further understand functional connectivity in the brain, we need to identify the coupling direction between neuronal signals recorded from different brain areas. In this paper, we present a novel methodology based on permutation analysis and conditional mutual information for estimation of a directionality index between two neuronal populations. First, the reliability of this method is numerically assessed with a coupled mass neural model; the simulations show that this method is superior to the conditional mutual information method and the Granger causality method for identifying the coupling direction between unidirectional or bidirectional neuronal populations that are generated by the mass neuronal model. The method is also applied to investigate the coupling direction between neuronal populations in CA1 and CA3 in the rat hippocampal tetanus toxin model of focal epilepsy; the propagation direction of the seizure events could be elucidated through this coupling direction estimation method. All together, these results suggest that the permutation conditional mutual information method is a promising technique for estimating directional coupling between mutually interconnected neuronal populations.