Cognitive Brain Signal Processing: Healthy vs Alzheimer's Disease Patients

Processing the brain functionality during certain perceptual stimuli or activities is beneficial to better understanding the lost abilities of a mind of a patient with cognitive impairment. Electroencephalogram (EEG) has been widely used as a tool for brain mapping. In this paper, we discuss the experimental setup and methods of the Cognitive Brain signal Processing (CBP) project towards this direction. High spatial resolution EEG (256 channels) is acquired, while the subject perform a series of cognitive tests with known expected response. Four tests from the CANTAB© Battery evaluating visual memory, spatial working memory and attention, a Sudoku puzzle and tasks with external visual and audio stimuli i.e., emotional (Ekman images) and audio event-related potentials (ERP) comprise the experimental protocol. Three groups of subjects are recruited, i.e., 30 healthy young adults 25-40 years old, 30 healthy adults of 65 years and older, and 30 patients with mild Alzheimer’s disease (AD) aged 65 years and older. In the CBP project, the 2D vector field tomography (VFT) will be extended to the 3D space to create a novel tool to solve the inverse EEG problem towards source reconstruction and therefore brain mapping. The 3D VFT will be applied to the acquired data in order to facilitate the extraction of the cognitive states and the identification of dysfunctioning areas. The external stimuli will be correlated with the performance of the participants to verify which elements can be assistive and improve their performance. The results can be used to design intelligent assistive environments and help the communication of patients with AD in everyday life.

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