Approximating dipoles from human EEG activity: the effect of dipole source configuration on dipolarity using single dipole models

Dipolarity is the goodness-of-fit of the observed potential distribution with one calculated using specific assumptions about the source of the electrical potential distribution. The authors used computer simulations to examine the effect of different distributions of sources on their resulting dipolarity values. Electric dipoles were placed in a head-shaped model with uniform conductivity using four different dipole configurations (randomly oriented dipoles, a uniform dipole disk layer, a dipole disk layer with uniformly distributed holes, or one with randomly oriented dipoles). The best-fitting single dipole for each configuration was calculated and the dipolarity was computed as the mean squared error of the electrical potential distributions generated by the actual dipole configuration and by the best-fitting single dipole. The simulations show that: 1) a smooth dipole layer with or without holes gives dipolarities above 99.5% even when extended over areas as large as 1256 mm ²; 2) randomly oriented dipoles under a smooth dipole layer also give dipolarities above 99.5%; and 3) randomly oriented and distributed dipoles, even if contained in a small portion of the total area, give dipolarities below 93.0%. These simulations show that inhomogeneity (holes) within a dipole disk layer per se do not lower dipolarity; rather, it is the random orientation and distribution of these dipoles which lowers dipolarity. Furthermore, dipolarity is not lowered by such randomly oriented and distributed dipoles when they are beneath a dipole disk layer.