title: The effects of increasing stimulus complexity in event-related potentials and reaction time testing: clinical applications in evaluating patients with traumatic brain injury.
abstract: This study compared the effectiveness of P300 event related potentials (ERPs) and reaction time (RT) in discriminating patients with traumatic brain injury (TBI) from healthy control subjects. In particular, we examined how the use of more complex, ecologically relevant stimuli may affect the clinical utility of these tasks. We also evaluated how length of posttraumatic amnesia (PTA) and loss of consciousness (LOC) related to P300 and RT measures in our patient sample. There were 22 subjects (11 patients with TBI and 11 age-matched healthy control subjects). Four stimulus detection procedures were used: two using simple, conventional stimuli (auditory tone discrimination, AT; visual color discrimination, VC), and two using complex, ecologically relevant stimuli in the auditory and visual modalities (auditory word category discrimination, AWC; visual facial affect discrimination, VFA). Our results showed that RT measures were more effective in identifying TBI patients when complex stimuli were used (AWC and VFA). On the other hand, ERP measures were more effective in identifying TBI patients when simple stimuli were used (AT and VC). We also found a remarkably high correlation between duration of PTA and P300 amplitude.
authors.affiliation: Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Service, VA Palo Alto Health Care System, Palo Alto, California 94304, USA. henrylew@stanford.edu
authors.forename: Henry L
authors.initials: HL
authors.lastname: Lew
authors.forename: Darryl
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Thomander
authors.forename: Max
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Gray
authors.forename: John H
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Poole
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D001921:Brain / Q000503:physiopathology*; D001930:Brain Injuries / Q000175:diagnosis*; D018913:Event-Related Potentials, P300 / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011930:Reaction Time