Mutual information in the frequency domain for the study of biological systems

Phase-based causality analysis with partial mutual information from mixed embedding

Instantaneous phases extracted from multivariate time series can retain information about the relationships between the underlying mechanisms that generate the series. Although phases have been widely used in the study of nondirectional coupling and connectivity, they have not found similar appeal in the study of causality. Herein, we present a new method for phase-based causality analysis, which combines ideas from the mixed embedding technique and the information-theoretic approach to causality in coupled oscillatory systems. We then use the introduced method to investigate causality in simulated datasets of bivariate, unidirectionally paired systems from combinations of Rössler, Lorenz, van der Pol, and Mackey-Glass equations. We observe that causality analysis using the phases can capture the true causal relation for coupling strength smaller than the analysis based on the amplitudes can capture. On the other hand, the causality estimation based on the phases tends to have larger variability, which is attributed more to the phase extraction process than the actual phase-based causality method. In addition, an application on real electroencephalographic data from an experiment on elicited human emotional states reinforces the usefulness of phases in causality identification.