Guidelines for using human event-related potentials to study cognition: Recording standards and publication criteria

Abstract

Event-related potentials~ERPs! recorded from the human scalp can provide important information about how the human brain normally processes information and about how this processing may go awry in neurological or psychiatric disorders. Scientists using or studying ERPs must strive to overcome the many technical problems that can occur in the recording and analysis of these potentials. The methods and the results of these ERP studies must be published in a way that allows other scientists to understand exactly what was done so that they can, if necessary, replicate the experiments. The data must then be analyzed and presented in a way that allows different studies to be compared readily. This paper presents guidelines for recording ERPs and criteria for publishing the results.Descriptors: Event-related potentials, Methods, Artifacts, Measurement, Statistics Event-related potentials~ERPs! are voltage fluctuations that are associated in time with some physical or mental occurrence. These potentials can be recorded from the human scalp and extracted from the ongoing electroencephalogram~EEG! by means of filtering and signal averaging. Although ERPs can be evaluated in both frequency and time domains, these particular guidelines are concerned with ERPs recorded in the time domain, that is, as waveforms that plot the change in voltage as a function of time. These waveforms contain components that span a continuum between the exogenous potentials~obligatory responses determined by the physical characteristics of the eliciting event in the external world! and the endogenous potentials~manifestations of information processing in the brain that may or may not be invoked by the eliciting event!.1 Because the temporal resolution of these measurements is on the order of milliseconds, ERPs can accurately measure when processing activities take place in the human brain. The spatial resolution of ERP measurements is limited both by theory and by our present technology, but multichannel recordings can allow us to estimate the intracerebral locations of these cerebral processes. The temporal and spatial information provided by ERPs may be used in many different research programs, with goals that range from understanding how the brain implements the mind to making specific diagnoses in medicine or psychology. Data cannot have scientific value unless they are published for evaluation and replication by other scientists. These ERP guidelines are therefore phrased primarily in terms of publication criteria. The scientific endeavor consists of three main steps, and these map well onto the sections of the published paper. The first step is the most important but the least well understood-the discovery of Address reprint requests to: Terence W. Picton, Rotman Research Institute,

Scalp electrode impedance, infection risk, and EEG data quality

“…Skin potentials can be avoided only by puncturing the skin under the electrode (Picton et al, 2000). With modern signal analytic methods, it is unlikely that skin potentials will be confused with the coherent neural electrical fields measured with a dense sensor array.…”

“…Rather, to meet CDC guidelines, electrodes that contact broken skin must be sterilized. Current research guidelines recommend not only scalp abrasion but puncturing the skin under each electrode with a surgical lance in order to reduce skin potentials (Picton, et al, 2000). Using a sterile lance is ineffective if the punctured skin is then placed into contact with a non-sterile electrode.…”

Aerobic fitness and cognitive development: Event-related brain potential and task performance indices of executive control in preadolescent children.

“…The participant was then prepared for neuroelectric measurement in accordance with the guidelines of the Society for Psychophysiological Research (Picton et al, 2000). An experimenter read aloud the task instructions, and the participant performed 20 practice trials.…”

Event-Related Brain Potentials in the Study of Inhibition: Cognitive Control, Source Localization and Age-Related Modulations

“…An ERP component can be described as a scalp-recorded voltage change that reflects a specific neural or psychological process (Luck 2005). ERP components have traditionally been classified as exogenous components, which depend on external factors (i.e., determined by the physical nature of the eliciting stimulus and generally occur within the first 200 ms after stimulus onset), or endogenous components, which primarily depend on internal factors (i.e., sensitive to proprieties, such as the meaning of the stimulus and/or the processing required to accomplish the task) (Picton et al 2000). An ERP component can be sensitive to different cognitive processes.…”