Abstract
This paper presents a summary of time-frequency analysis of the electrical activity of the brain (EEG). It covers in details two major steps: introduction of wavelets and adaptive approximations. Presented studies include time-frequency solutions to several standard research and clinical problems, encountered in analysis of evoked potentials, sleep EEG, epileptic activities, ERD/ERS and pharmaco-EEG. Based upon these results we conclude that the matching pursuit algorithm provides a unified parametrization of EEG, applicable in a variety of experimental and clinical setups. This conclusion is followed by a brief discussion of the current state of the mathematical and algorithmical aspects of adaptive time-frequency approximations of signals.