What are temporal limits in determining brain metastability? In other words, how long does the minimum length of the scan segment using fMRI have to be for the result to be of any value?
I'm particularly interested in measuring metastability during decision making. If I have two different decision conditions, which are shown alternately in the fMRI paradigm (so let's say condition A and B, and paradigm look like it: ABABABAB....), will "slicing" the data and combining them later produce reliable results in the context of metastability estimation (so I could calculate metastability for A and B condition separately)?
I came across a publication where a similar operation was performed (Alderson, TH, Bokde, AL, Kelso, JS, Maguire, L. and Coyle, D., 2020. Metastable neural dynamics underlies cognitive performance across multiple behavioral paradigms. Human brain mapping, 41 ( 12), pp. 3212-3234.). However, it concerned cutting out fixation elements between trials and joining whole blocks. I, on the other hand, want to cut and join the trials, then compare the level of metastability between the two conditions. Is it possible, or not really good idea?
I am sure that you saw this but just in case that you have not, these folks have pinpointed the fundamental theoretical problem with metastability and linear dynamics and have offered an interesting solution albeit not directly related to fMRI.
Article Transient Cognitive Dynamics, Metastability, and Decision Making
I hope this article will help you regarding metastability.
Article The Metastable Brain
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