Comparison of Mutual Information and Partial Correlation for Functional Connectivity in fNIRS

Non-invasive monitoring of human brain function by Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) has been applied to study of brain oxygenation and metabolism. In this study, weaimed to investigate the functional connectivity in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) during a modified version of the color-wordmatching Stroop task. Stroop task, which requires responding to a particular stimulus dimension while suppressing a competingstimulus dimension, is commonly used to evaluate PFC function. Partial correlation (PC) values and Mutual Information (MI) values were computed for each stimulus condition. Eventually the two methods were compared