title: Stability and distribution of steady-state somatosensory evoked potentials elicited by vibro-tactile stimulation.
abstract: Steady-state somatosensory evoked potentials (SSSEPs) have been elicited applying vibro-tactile stimulation to all fingertips of the right hand. Nine healthy subjects participated in two sessions within this study. All fingers were stimulated 40 times with a 200-Hz carrier frequency modulated with a rectangular signal. The frequencies of the rectangular signal ranged between 17 and 35 Hz in 2 Hz steps. Relative band power tuning curves were calculated, introducing two different methods. Person-specific resonance-like frequencies were selected based on the data from the first session. The selected resonance-like frequencies were compared with the second session using an ANOVA for repeated measures to investigate the stability of SSSEPs over time. To determine, if SSSEPs can be classified with a classifier based on unseen data, an LDA classifier was trained with data from the first and applied to data from the second session. Person-specific resonance-like frequencies within a range from 19 to 29 Hz were found. The relative band power of the resonance-like frequencies did not differ significantly between the two sessions. Significant differences were found for the two methods and the used channels. SSSEPs were classified with a hit rate from 51 to 96 %.
authors.affiliation: BCI Lab, Institute for Knowledge Discovery, Graz University of Technology, Krenngasse 37, 8010 Graz, Austria. c.breitwieser@tugraz.at
authors.forename: Christian
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Breitwieser
authors.forename: Vera
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Kaiser
authors.forename: Christa
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Neuper
authors.forename: Gernot R
authors.initials: GR
authors.lastname: Müller-Putz
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D004569:Electroencephalography / Q000379:methods; D005073:Evoked Potentials, Somatosensory / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D005385:Fingers / Q000294:innervation; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010812:Physical Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted; D014110:Touch / Q000502:physiology*; D014584:User-Computer Interface; D014732:Vibration