  In our earlier study dealing with the analysis of neuromagnetic responses
(magnetoencephalograms - MEG) to flickering-color stimuli for a group of
control human subjects (9 volunteers) and a patient with photosensitive
epilepsy (a 12-year old girl), it was shown that Flicker-Noise Spectroscopy
(FNS) was able to identify specific differences in the responses of each
organism. The high specificity of individual MEG responses manifested itself in
the values of FNS parameters for both chaotic and resonant components of the
original signal. The present study applies the FNS cross-correlation function
to the analysis of correlations between the MEG responses simultaneously
measured at spatially separated points of the human cortex processing the
red-blue flickering color stimulus. It is shown that the cross-correlations for
control (healthy) subjects are characterized by frequency and phase
synchronization at different points of the cortex, with the dynamics of
neuromagnetic responses being determined by the low-frequency processes that
correspond to normal physiological rhythms. But for the patient, the frequency
and phase synchronization breaks down, which is associated with the suppression
of cortical regulatory functions when the flickering-color stimulus is applied,
and higher frequencies start playing the dominating role. This suggests that
the disruption of correlations in the MEG responses is the indicator of
pathological changes leading to photosensitive epilepsy, which can be used for
developing a method of diagnosing the disease based on the analysis with the
FNS cross-correlation function.
