[Eeglablist] Invitation to collaborate on an open paper about EEG’s 1/f power distribution

Thu Nov 6 22:26:11 PST 2025

Dear colleagues!
I am very interested in this topic. It aligns with my understanding that there is no single mechanism generating the EEG we record, but rather several (I believe at least three) distinct yet interacting mechanisms. (This is the subject of an article published in Russian, and if anyone wishes to criticize it, I can provide the text and a poorly written English translation.) The presence of a 1/f component, along with the spectral peaks, is consistent with this view. Furthermore, I believe that different mathematical approaches should be used to analyze processes with different generation mechanisms.
As a concrete proposal, we could construct a regression of the logarithm of power on frequency, but using a robust regression estimation method rather than the least-squares method. This method would treat peaks as outliers that are ignored (negative values of the logarithms of very small power values at certain frequencies would also be treated as outliers). This way, we can estimate the 1/f (or rather 1/f ^alpha ) component and separate it from the "spectral peaks."
I'd like to participate to the best of my ability, or at least review the results of this work when it's completed.

Eugen Masherov

> I'm surprised to find many responses in just over a night.
> 
> Ivano, Toby, Maruti, Meha, Tzvetomir, Dominic, and Adam--you replied to me
> personally. Please reply to the mailing list directly so that other
> subscribers can read your post.
> Just reply to the list without editing the email title. For more detail,
> see this page https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://eeglab.org/others/EEGLAB_mailing_lists.html__;!!Mih3wA!BPiQbrV-eQ7cXQTAeozwIJV84VGCG_HpjMHdu1kxPyOJuNbmldwUuMg4R7aVQUmRjhxB3ZQoPR12o77fCQMdXX3r0GI$
> 
> Maybe we need a Google Document Spreadsheet to manage the potential
> authors' names.
> Can someone volunteer to manage it?
> 
> %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
> 
> I was telling Mate and Cedric that I was probably the least interested in
> this topic. I was very impressed by Gao and colleague's paper (2017
> NeuroImage) that the spectral exponent (SPEX) may reflect E/I balance. But
> there are other factors that contribute to SPEX. I thought the most
> dominant one was the 'dendritic filtering' described by the cable theory.
> If you read Electric Fields of the Brain (2006), you find this is one of
> the major sources of the 'low-pass filter effect' and the other factor,
> differences in network size across frequencies and spatial averaging
> principle at electrode/volume conduction, is more obvious. I want to know
> which factor is most dominant in determining the 1/f-ness, AMPA/GABA_A
> receptor balance, the 'dendritic filter' by the cable theory, or the
> differences in spatial network sizes across signal frequencies, otherwise I
> feel uneasy what we are discussing. Note that Voytek lab has been
> publishing really solid evidence using simulated, animal, and human
> datasets, so I have no doubt there. But still, I want to see by and large
> ratio of influence across those multiple factors.
> 
> So, what is so interesting about the 1/f-ness? Can anyone tell me please?
> 
> Mate and I will meet on Zoom on Nov 7, 11 am - noon in EST (i.e., the New
> York time zone). I invite you to jump in if you can make it.
> 
> Time: Nov 7, 2025 11:00 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://ucsd.zoom.us/j/98219923907?pwd=YkR9t04S7N23IP7Rf1XZXmHvK5LXsY.1__;!!Mih3wA!BPiQbrV-eQ7cXQTAeozwIJV84VGCG_HpjMHdu1kxPyOJuNbmldwUuMg4R7aVQUmRjhxB3ZQoPR12o77fCQMdEZkHooc$
> Meeting ID: 982 1992 3907
> Password: 681398
> 
> Makoto
> 
> On Tue, Nov 4, 2025 at 7:07 PM Makoto Miyakoshi <mmiyakoshi at ucsd.edu> wrote:
> 
>> Hello EEGLAB mailing list,
>>
>> Some of you may recall the long, dense, and ever-continuing discussion we
>> witnessed this summer about EEG’s 1/f power distribution. I’m sure many of
>> you wondered, “Can they please stop quoting papers while speaking?” That
>> conversation seemed to have ended on the list. But it has continued
>> off-list! And now, it has led to the idea of writing a collaborative paper.
>>
>> We’d like to invite anyone interested to join this open project. You don’t
>> need to be a specialist; genuine curiosity and a willingness to contribute
>> are what matter most.
>>
>> If you’d like to participate, please reply to this mailing list so that
>> everyone can stay in the loop.
>>
>> For those curious, I’ve also included below a brief history of EEGLAB
>> mailing list–initiated publications.
>>
>> Makoto
>>
>> %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
>> There have been several papers initiated through collaborations among the
>> EEGLAB mailing list community and myself. Perhaps the most memorable one
>> was the *ICA's bug *paper:
>>
>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/signal-processing/articles/10.3389/frsip.2023.1064138/full__;!!Mih3wA!BPiQbrV-eQ7cXQTAeozwIJV84VGCG_HpjMHdu1kxPyOJuNbmldwUuMg4R7aVQUmRjhxB3ZQoPR12o77fCQMdB87tEFY$
>>
>> We can find the origin of this project in the following post.
>>
>> *On Fri, May 7, 2021 at 2:25 PM Makoto Miyakoshi <mmiyakoshi at ucsd.edu <https://sccn.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/eeglablist  >>
>> **Dear subscribers,
>> **Recently, there are multiple independent posts about the data rank issue **with ICA. In response, I am thinking about running a simulation **experiment **with a visiting scholar to SCCN as a small project on this issue for **publication. I would appreciate it if you can give me any of the **following **as an input.*
>>
>> I made it festive: I invited a high-school intern to join as a co-author
>> (his coding skill was GOOD); I also invited a person whose name had been
>> mysteriously engraved for over a decade in an annotation of EEGLAB’s code
>> in question; I cited four authorities via unfashionable “private
>> communication”; and yes, I gave the paper a catchy title that the first
>> author did not like… etc., etc.
>>
>>>* > On Fri, May 7, 2021 at 2:25 PM Makoto Miyakoshi <mmiyakoshi at ucsd.edu <https://sccn.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/eeglablist  >>
>> *>* wrote:
>> *>* >
>> *>* >> Dear subscribers,
>> *>* >>
>> *>* >> Recently, there are multiple independent posts about the data rank issue
>> *>* >> with ICA. In response, I am thinking about running a simulation
>> *>* experiment
>> *>* >> with a visiting scholar to SCCN as a small project on this issue for
>> *>* >> publication. I would appreciate it if you can give me any of the
>> *>* following
>> *>* >> as an input.
>> *>* >>
>> *>* >> - Questions (what is puzzling for you? No need to be shy for asking
>> *>* >> 'dumb questions')
>> *>* >> - Requests (if you want to know particularly X and/or Y on this issue,
>> *>* >> I may be able to give you the answer based on the simulation test)
>> *>* >> - Suggestions (about methods, data type, applications, etc)
>> *>* >> - Reports (when ICA failed, what did you see?)
>> *>* >>
>> *>* >> If you are interested in working with me to make a contribution to this
>> *>* >> small project, please reply or contact me mmiyakoshi at ucsd.edu. <https://sccn.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/eeglablist  > If your
>> *>* >> contribution is substantial, I'll offer you to be a coauthor. Probably
>> *>* we
>> *>* >> will need as many strange results as possible...?
>> *>* >>
>> *>* >> Probably this is the first attempt to run an open experiment on the
>> *>* EEGLAB
>> *>* >> mailing list--please join us and let's find out what happens!
>> *>* >>
>> *>* >> Makoto*
> 
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