Phase lag index: Assessment of functional connectivity from multi channel EEG and MEG with diminished bias from common sources

To address the problem of volume conduction and active reference electrodes in the assessment of functional connectivity, we propose a novel measure to quantify phase synchronization, the phase lag index (PLI), and compare its performance to the well-known phase coherence (PC), and to the imaginary component of coherency (IC).

The PLI is a measure of the asymmetry of the distribution of phase differences between two signals. The performance of PLI, PC, and IC was examined in (i) a model of 64 globally coupled oscillators, (ii) an EEG with an absence seizure, (iii) an EEG data set of 15 Alzheimer patients and 13 control subjects, and (iv) two MEG data sets.