Classification Methods Based on Complexity and Synchronization of Electroencephalography Signals in Alzheimer's Disease

Sou Nobukawa; Teruya Yamanishi; Shinya Kasakawa; Haruhiko Nishimura; Mitsuru Kikuchi; Tetsuya Takahashi

doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2020.00255

Classification Methods Based on Complexity and Synchronization of Electroencephalography Signals in Alzheimer's Disease

Front Psychiatry. 2020 Apr 7:11:255. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2020.00255. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Sou Nobukawa¹, Teruya Yamanishi², Shinya Kasakawa², Haruhiko Nishimura³, Mitsuru Kikuchi^{4

5}, Tetsuya Takahashi^{4

6}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Computer Science, Chiba Institute of Technology, Narashino, Japan.
² AI & IoT Center, Department of Management Information Science, Fukui University of Technology, Fukui, Japan.
³ Graduate School of Applied Informatics, University of Hyogo, Kobe, Japan.
⁴ Research Center for Child Mental Development, Kanazawa University, Kanazawa, Japan.
⁵ Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Science, Kanazawa University, Ishikawa, Japan.
⁶ Department of Neuropsychiatry, University of Fukui, Yoshida, Japan.

Abstract

Electroencephalography (EEG) has long been studied as a potential diagnostic method for Alzheimer's disease (AD). The pathological progression of AD leads to cortical disconnection. These disconnections may manifest as functional connectivity alterations, measured by the degree of synchronization between different brain regions, and alterations in complex behaviors produced by the interaction among wide-spread brain regions. Recently, machine learning methods, such as clustering algorithms and classification methods, have been adopted to detect disease-related changes in functional connectivity and classify the features of these changes. Although complexity of EEG signals can also reflect AD-related changes, few machine learning studies have focused on the changes in complexity. Therefore, in this study, we compared the ability of EEG signals to detect characteristics of AD using different machine learning approaches one focused on functional connectivity and the other focused on signal complexity. We examined functional connectivity, estimated by phase lag index (PLI) in EEG signals in healthy older participants [healthy control (HC)] and patients with AD. We estimated signal complexity using multi-scale entropy. Utilizing a support vector machine, we compared the identification accuracy of AD based on functional connectivity at each frequency band and complexity component. Additionally, we evaluated the relationship between synchronization and complexity. The identification accuracy of functional connectivity of the alpha, beta, and gamma bands was significantly high (AUC 1.0), and the identification accuracy of complexity was sufficiently high (AUC 0.81). Moreover, the relationship between functional connectivity and complexity exhibited various temporal-scale-and-regional-specific dependency in both HC participants and patients with AD. In conclusion, the combination of functional connectivity and complexity might reflect complex pathological process of AD. Applying a combination of both machine learning methods to neurophysiological data may provide a novel understanding of the neural network processes in both healthy brains and pathological conditions.

Keywords: Alzheimer’s disease; complexity, functional connectivity; electroencephalography; machine learning.