System for Evaluating Brain Response to Two Electrical Stimuli with Arbitrary Waveform
摘要
Somatosensory Evoked Potential (SSEP) systems with single-channel electrical stimulators have been commonly used in clinical practice and research, which has not allowed the investigation of paradigms involving simultaneous current stimuli with different waveforms. The aim of this work was to implement a system for evaluating the brain response to two electrical stimuli of arbitrary waveforms. The system consists in an acquisition module to capture electroencephalography signals, a two-channel electrical stimulator, and user interface module. The user interface has been developed in Python to interact with the electrical stimulator. A healthy subject participated in the experiment application. First, we found the sensitivity threshold (ST) using sinusoidal electrical stimulation (SES) at 1 Hz (fine fibers) and 2 kHz (thick fibers). Then, EEG signals were captured using single and simultaneous SES at 1 Hz and 2 kHz. The ST was 135 µ at 1 Hz and 1106 uA at 2 kHz. During single stimulation, the alpha rhythms showed desynchronization (ERD) in the contralateral central-parietal region for both frequencies, however stimulus at 1 Hz showed greater latency (2 s) than 2 kHz (200 ms). The ERD for simultaneous stimulation were similar to 2 kHz but with lower amplitude. The ST values agree with prior studies. A higher latency at 1 Hz may be due to the lower conduction velocity of the thin fibers. The result of simultaneous stimulation suggests that 2 kHz (tick fibers) inhibited the ERD due 1 Hz (thin fibers). The proposed system will can be used to investigate brain responses with new paradigms using two-electrical stimuli of arbitrary waveforms.