A simulation study: comparing independent component analysis and signal-space projection - source-informed reconstruction for rejecting muscle artifacts evoked by transcranial magnetic stimulation.

Introduction: The combination of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and electroencephalography (EEG) allows researchers to explore cortico-cortical connections. To study effective connections, the first few tens of milliseconds of the TMS-evoked potentials are the most critical. Yet, TMS-evoked artifacts complicate the interpretation of early-latency data.

Measuring the accuracy of ICA-based artifact removal from TMS-evoked potentials.

Background: The analysis and interpretation of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)-evoked potentials (TEPs) relies on successful cleaning of the artifacts, which typically mask the early (0-30 ms) TEPs. Independent component analysis (ICA) is possibly the single most utilized methodology to clean these signals.

Objective: ICA-based cleaning is reliable provided that the input data are composed of independent components.