fsaverage and/or Freesurfer

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Hello everybody

I am conducting source-level EEG connectivity.
I have two questions.

  1. Is fsaverage(mne.datasets.fetch_fsaverage()) in MNE is a fallback option functioning as a FreeSurfer-generated average brain and can serve as a substitute of Freesurfer which creates a standard source space and forward model?

  2. If yes, can I just use fsaverage without downloading Freesurfer?

Thank you in advance
Pouya

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Hey,
I don’t know what brains have been used to create the fsaverage from MNE but in any case with free surfer you get the option to create a specific average brain which is more precise for dealing with a specific population (eg. children).

Also I guess it starts making a lot of layers for source reconstruction (eeg poor snr, non specific average brain). It would depend on your intentions, maybe if you could specify them a bit more.

You can use fsaverage without freesurfer, although to make an inverse solution you need files provided by freesurfer but if you only want the source reconstruction from the average I think they are all present in the mne.datasets.

Please correct me where I am wrong.

1 Like
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Yes, you can use the MNE-packaged fsaverage brain without having to install FreeSurfer.

Best wishes,
Richard

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Thank you @richard and @Ezekiel7811a .