Dear Melina
I wonder about the structure of your DCM. I assume you have driving, intrinsic and possibly
modulatory connections. From your description below you say the DCM.A matrix values corresponding
to the sustained -> transient connections are 0, but I wonder if the DCM.A values for the transient
network connections are 0. My guess is they are not.
I am probably wrong but here is my suggestion: I wonder if you have a situation in which you do not
actually propagate or connect your driving inputs into your sustained network? As an example, see
below (I am ignoring modulatory inputs if any) T means a node in the transient network and S in
the sustained network.
INPUT --> T1 <- S1
| ^
| |
v v
T2 <- S2
In this case the driving input enters at T1 which is connected to T2, but S1 and S2 never see this
input since their connections are only backwards. I would expect DCM.A(T1 > T2) to have some value,
but DCM.A(S1 > T1), DCM.A(S2 > T2) and DCM.A (S1 <> S2) would have values of 0.
As I said this may be incorrect and Klaas will correct me if this would not be expected, but I hope
this helps.
Darren
==============Original message text===============
On Mon, 18 Jun 2007 5:15:50 pm CDT Melina Uncapher wrote:
Hi Klaas,
Thanks for your reply. Unfortunately, I'd already checked all those points
and none appeared to be the culprit. The estimation appears normal, with
~10-12 steps, no error messages, manual specification, all data were in
their appropriate spots in the matrices, etc. Even changing the precision of
the printed values made no difference to the values. In fact, if I remove
other connections the values are estimated fine. Has this been encountered
in SPM5?
Thanks,
~Melina
*****************************************
Melina R. Uncapher, Ph.D.
Functional NeuroImaging of Memory Group
Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory
Department of Neurobiology and Behavior
University of California at Irvine
[log in to unmask]" target="_blank">http:[log in to unmask]
-----Original Message-----
From: SPM (Statistical Parametric Mapping) [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Klaas Enno Stephan
Sent: Monday, June 18, 2007 2:35 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [SPM] DCM parameter estimation problem
Dear Melina,
This sounds odd, and I am not sure what the problem could be. Here
are a few things that you may wish to check (unless you have already done
so):
1. How many steps does the estimation take? Does it converge after a
single step? If so, have you double checked that you specified the
driving inputs correctly? Also, do you get any warnings or errors
messages during estimation?
2. Are you sure that the values in DCM.A are really zero, or not
just close to zero? You can check this by printing the values at
higher precision, using something like the sprintf command in Matlab.
3. Did you manually specify the DCM that you are trying to estimate,
or was it created algorithmically? If the latter, have you double
checked whether anything went wrong in transferring the timeseries,
i.e. does DCM.xY.u look like it contains your time series?
This is all I can think of at the moment. You may also want to try
estimating the model with the code in SPM 5. Generally, I would
always recommend to use SPM 5 for DCM. The code is much more robust
than in SPM 2.
Best wishes,
Klaas
At 18:57 13/06/2007, you wrote:
>Hi Klaas,
>
>I'm a postdoc working with Mick Rugg in California, and I've an odd (and
>hopefully quick) DCM question for you. In running my fourth set of DCMs,
I'm
>running into a problem I've not encountered before. I'm looking at how
>regions that exhibit sustained activity interact with those showing
>transient activity, but when both sets of regions are included in the same
>model, the parameters in the A matrix corresponding to the connection
>strength from the sustained to the transient regions do not seem to get
>estimated. The DCM.a is appropriate, but the DCM.A contains 0s in the
>relevant cells (yet has appropriate values in the cells for the visual
>region to the transient regions).
>
>I should qualify this by stating I'm still using SPM2, as all my prior DCMs
>have been estimated in SPM2. I've tried to run diagnostics by
systematically
>excluding regions or otherwise changing the A matrix, yet I find no rhyme
or
>reason to when the parameters are estimated and when they're not. Have you
>encountered this before?
>
>Any help would be greatly appreciated. Mick sends his best.
>
>Thanks in advance,
>~Melina Uncapher
>
>*****************************************
>Melina R. Uncapher, Ph.D.
>Functional NeuroImaging of Memory Group
>Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory
>Department of Neurobiology and Behavior
>University of California at Irvine
>http://fnim.bio.uci.edu>[log in to unmask]
>
>
===========End of original message text===========
--------------------------------
Darren R. Gitelman, M.D.
Department of Neurology
710 N. Lake Shore Dr. #1122
Chicago, IL 60611
Voice: (312) 908-8614
Fax: (312) 908-5073
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