Sparse Source EEG Imaging with the Variational Garrote

EEG imaging, the estimation of the cortical source distribution from scalp electrode measurements, poses an extremely ill-posed inverse problem. Recent work by Delorme et al. (2012) supports the hypothesis that distributed source solutions are sparse. We show that direct search for sparse solutions as implemented by the Variational Garrote (Kappen, 2011) provides excellent estimates compared with other widely used schemes, is computationally attractive, and by its separation of 'where' and 'what' degrees of freedom paves the road for the introduction of genuine prior information.