A domination-based comparative study of signal-level and source-level EEG functional connectivity during rest and task conditions

Understanding how different brain regions work together during rest and cognitive tasks is still a major challenge. Standard graph measures, like centrality, often miss regions influential in terms of coverage and control in EEG-based brain networks.To address this, we applied domination theory by using minimum dominating set (MDS), minimum hitting set (MHS), and domination strength, to study EEG connectivity at both the signal and source-reconstructed levels during resting and mental arithmetic tasks. Our analysis showed that the electrodes Pz and Fz were key nodes at the signal level, while fusiform-lh, superiorfrontal-lh, and insula-lh were key nodes at the source level during task performance. Interestingly, some of these nodes didn’t show high centrality scores, revealing new influential regions that were not captured by traditional metrics. These results demonstrate that domination-based methods offer a new and powerful way to uncover critical nodes in brain networks and can complement existing analytical approaches in neuroscience.