A Transfer Entropy-based methodology to analyze information flow under eyes-open and eyes-closed conditions with a clinical perspective

The study of brain dynamics under normal or pathological conditions has proven to be a difficult task, there is no unified consensus on how it should be studied. In this article we present a methodology based on Transfer Entropy to characterize the information flow between different brain hemispheres in eyes-open (EO) and eyes-closed (EC) resting states in healthy subjects, with an experimental setup that resembles the technical conditions found in a clinical setting. We have estimated the Transfer Entropy between the Hilbert phases of bandpass filtered EEG channels. We have designed a methodology to analyze the interhemispheric and intrahemispheric information flow in both conditions. Our results suggest an increased information transfer in the EC condition for the alpha, beta1 and beta2 frequency bands. Furthermore, we do not observe a preferred direction of interhemispheric information movement in both conditions. In conclusion, there is evidence of a significant difference in the brain’s information transfer dynamics between EO and EC resting states.