title: Use of a steady-state baseline to address evoked vs. oscillation models of visual evoked potential origin.
abstract: There has been a long debate about the neural mechanism of event-related potentials (ERPs). Previously, no evidence or method was apparent to validate the two competing models, the evoked model and the oscillation model. One argument is whether the pre-stimulus brain oscillation could influence the following ERP. This study carried out an innovative visual oddball task experiment to investigate the dynamic process of visual evoked potentials. A period of stable oscillations of specified dominant frequencies and initial phases, i.e. the steady-state baseline, would be induced before responses to transient stimuli of different contrasts, which could overcome the artifact problem caused by the 'sorting' method. The result first revealed a 'three-period-transition' for the generation of visual evoked potentials by an objective decomposition. The ERP almost retained the preceding oscillation during the first period, provided an unstable negative potential in the second period, and generated the N1 component in the third period. The cross term analysis showed that the evoked model couldn't be the whole explanation for the ERP generation. Furthermore, the component analysis revealed that the N1 latency was sensitive to the initial phase under the low stimulus contrast (supporting the oscillation model) but not under the high stimulus contrast (supporting the evoked model). It demonstrated that the external stimulus contrast is a significant factor deciding the explicit model for ERPs. Our method and preliminary results may help reconcile the previous, seemly contradictory findings on the ERP mechanism.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Tianjin University, Nankai, Tianjin 300072, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Minpeng
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Tianjin University, Nankai, Tianjin 300072, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Yihong
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Jia
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Tianjin University, Nankai, Tianjin 300072, People's Republic of China. Electronic address: qhz@tju.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Hongzhi
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Qi
authors.affiliation: Department of Orthopaedics and Traumatology, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China; Institute of Biomedical Engineering, Chinese Academy of Medical Science & Peking Union Medical College, Nankai, Tianjin 300192, China.
authors.forename: Yong
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Hu
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Tianjin University, Nankai, Tianjin 300072, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Feng
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: He
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Tianjin University, Nankai, Tianjin 300072, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Xin
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Tianjin University, Nankai, Tianjin 300072, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Peng
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Tianjin University, Nankai, Tianjin 300072, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Lixin
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Tianjin University, Nankai, Tianjin 300072, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Baikun
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Wan
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiology and Biomedical Research Imaging Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA.
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Gao
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Tianjin University, Nankai, Tianjin 300072, People's Republic of China. Electronic address: richardming@tju.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Dong
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Ming
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001683:Biological Clocks / Q000502:physiology*; D058256:Brain Waves / Q000502:physiology*; D003198:Computer Simulation; D005074:Evoked Potentials, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008959:Models, Neurological; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D014793:Visual Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: Cross term analysis; ERP; Neural mechanism; Period transition; Phase resetting; SSVEP