Extracting a stimulus-unlocked component from EEG during NoGo trials of a Go/NoGo task

Like electroencephalographic (EEG) activity during reaction time tasks, EEG activity during tasks without overt responses may also consist of two components: stimulus-locked and -unlocked components. The extraction of such stimulus-unlocked components has been difficult owing to the unknown delays. Here, we propose a novel method to extract both of the two components from single-channel EEG epochs. In this method, we initially set random values for the delays and extract uncontaminated stimulus-locked and -unlocked components using the preset delays and a discrete Fourier transform. Then, we reconstruct the EEG by overlapping the extracted components with the preset delays, and calculate the residual errors between the reconstructed and original EEG. This procedure is repeated by updating the delays until the residual errors become adequately small. After verifying the performance of this method by two kinds of simulations with artificial and EEG data, we apply the method to EEG during NoGo trials of a Go/NoGo task, and obtain the stimulus-unlocked components, the magnitudes of which are comparable with those of the stimulus-locked components. By applying this method, it is possible to study internal and subjective brain activity, which occurs with variable delays.

[1]  D S Goodin,et al.  Subclasses of event‐related potentials: Response‐locked and stimulus‐locked components , 1986, Annals of neurology.

[2]  W. Walter,et al.  Contingent Negative Variation : An Electric Sign of Sensori-Motor Association and Expectancy in the Human Brain , 1964, Nature.

[3]  Noritaka Kawashima,et al.  Human cortical activities during Go/NoGo tasks with opposite motor control paradigms , 2002, Experimental Brain Research.

[4]  C. Woody.  Characterization of an adaptive filter for the analysis of variable latency neuroelectric signals , 1967, Medical and biological engineering.

[5]  H. Bokura,et al.  Electrophysiological correlates for response inhibition in a Go/NoGo task , 2001, Clinical Neurophysiology.

[6]  Piotr Jaskowski,et al.  Evidence for an Integrative Role of P3b in Linking Reaction to Perception , 2005 .

[7]  M Schürmann,et al.  Functional aspects of alpha oscillations in the EEG. , 2001, International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology.

[8]  T. Sejnowski,et al.  Analysis and visualization of single‐trial event‐related potentials , 2001, Human brain mapping.

[9]  J. Pernier,et al.  Stimulus Specificity of Phase-Locked and Non-Phase-Locked 40 Hz Visual Responses in Human , 1996, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[10]  J. Gruzelier,et al.  Topographical analysis of stimulus-related and response-related electrical scalp activity and interhemispheric dynamics in normal humans. , 2002, International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology.

[11]  R. J. Nelson,et al.  Relationships between sensory responsiveness and premovement activity of quickly adapting neurons in areas 3b and 1 of monkey primary somatosensory cortex , 2004, Experimental Brain Research.

[12]  A Puce,et al.  P3 latency jitter assessed using 2 techniques. II. Surface and sphenoidal recordings in subjects with focal epilepsy. , 1994, Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology.

[13]  Karl J. Friston,et al.  Mechanisms of evoked and induced responses in MEG/EEG , 2006, NeuroImage.

[14]  Juliana Yordanova,et al.  On the relation of movement-related potentials to the go/no-go effect on P3 , 2006, Biological Psychology.

[15]  A Puce,et al.  P3 latency jitter assessed using 2 techniques. I. Simulated data and surface recordings in normal subjects. , 1994, Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology.

[16]  R. Verleger,et al.  An evaluation of methods for single-trial estimation of P3 latency. , 2000, Psychophysiology.

[17]  A. A. Zhigli︠a︡vskiĭ,et al.  Theory of Global Random Search , 1991 .

[18]  A. Kok.  Overlap between P300 and movement-related-potentials: A response to Verleger , 1988, Biological Psychology.

[19]  J Tanji,et al.  Comparison of movement-related activity in two cortical motor areas of primates. , 1982, Journal of neurophysiology.

[20]  P. Jaskowski,et al.  Amplitudes and latencies of single-trial ERP's estimated by a maximum-likelihood method , 1999, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering.

[21]  G. Fein,et al.  Event-related potential evidence for frontal cortex effects of chronic cocaine dependence , 1997, Biological Psychiatry.

[22]  Edward M. Bowden,et al.  Neural Activity When People Solve Verbal Problems with Insight , 2004, PLoS biology.

[23]  C. D. Gelatt,et al.  Optimization by Simulated Annealing , 1983, Science.

[24]  T. Demiralp,et al.  Comparative analysis of event-related potentials during Go/NoGo and CPT: Decomposition of electrophysiological markers of response inhibition and sustained attention , 2006, Brain Research.

[25]  F W Simonds.  A MINERAL SURVEY IN TEXAS. , 1901, Science.

[26]  Yoshiharu Yamamoto,et al.  Temporal decomposition of EEG during a simple reaction time task into stimulus- and response-locked components , 2008, NeuroImage.

[27]  John H. Holland,et al.  Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems: An Introductory Analysis with Applications to Biology, Control, and Artificial Intelligence , 1992 .

[28]  M. Whittington,et al.  Gamma and beta frequency oscillations in response to novel auditory stimuli: A comparison of human electroencephalogram (EEG) data with in vitro models. , 2000, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[29]  Y. Lamarre,et al.  Fast ballistic arm movements triggered by visual, auditory, and somesthetic stimuli in the monkey. I. Activity of precentral cortical neurons. , 1983, Journal of neurophysiology.

[30]  T Kizuka,et al.  Automatic activation in the human primary motor cortex synchronized with movement preparation. , 1999, Brain research. Cognitive brain research.

[31]  R. Nelson.  Activity of monkey primary somatosensory cortical neurons changes prior to active movement , 1987, Brain Research.

[32]  T. Gasser,et al.  Variable latencies of noisy signals: Estimation and testing in brain potential data , 1987 .

[33]  J. Hohnsbein,et al.  ERP components in Go/Nogo tasks and their relation to inhibition. , 1999, Acta psychologica.

[34]  S. Perfiliev,et al.  Responses in the motor cortex time-locked to the sensory stimuli conditioning target-reaching in the cat , 1998, Neuroscience Research.

[35]  O. Bertrand,et al.  Oscillatory gamma activity in humans and its role in object representation , 1999, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[36]  Rolf Verleger,et al.  The true P3 is hard to see: Some comments on Kok's (1986) paper on degraded stimuli , 1988, Biological Psychology.

[37]  J Möcks,et al.  Novel approaches to the problem of latency jitter. , 1988, Psychophysiology.

[38]  Clare D. McGillem,et al.  Improved Waveform Estimation Procedures for Event-Related Potentials , 1985, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering.