A study of evoked potentials from ear-EEG

IEEE Trans Biomed Eng. 2013 Oct;60(10):2824-30. doi: 10.1109/TBME.2013.2264956. Epub 2013 May 29.

Abstract

A method for brain monitoring based on measuring the electroencephalogram (EEG) from electrodes placed in-the-ear (ear-EEG) was recently proposed. The objective of this study is to further characterize the ear-EEG and perform a rigorous comparison against conventional on-scalp EEG. This is achieved for both auditory and visual evoked responses, over steady-state and transient paradigms, and across a population of subjects. The respective steady-state responses are evaluated in terms of signal-to-noise ratio and statistical significance, while the qualitative analysis of the transient responses is performed by considering grand averaged event-related potential (ERP) waveforms. The outcomes of this study demonstrate conclusively that the ear-EEG signals, in terms of the signal-to-noise ratio, are on par with conventional EEG recorded from electrodes placed over the temporal region.

MeSH terms

  • Auditory Perception / physiology*
  • Ear / physiology*
  • Electrodes*
  • Electroencephalography / instrumentation*
  • Equipment Design
  • Equipment Failure Analysis
  • Evoked Potentials, Auditory / physiology*
  • Evoked Potentials, Visual / physiology*
  • Humans
  • Monitoring, Ambulatory / instrumentation*
  • Reproducibility of Results
  • Sensitivity and Specificity