EEG study on prefrontal cortex with verbal fluency protocol : wavelet and sample entropy analysis

Abstract

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimated in 2006 that neurological disorders affect about one billion people worldwide. Neuronal disorders in the brain usually impact the quality of life of the patient. In such disorders, the brain is probed with sophisticated technologies.

This project is a sub-project of the tri-modality probe design which combines the technology of electroencephalography (EEG), near-infrared diffuse optical spectroscopy (NIRS) and diffuse correlation spectroscopy (DCS) which will provide ample information about the brain.

The content of this project will be more focused on using the tri-modality probe to record EEG waves from the prefrontal cortex of the brain. This area of the brain is associated with cognitive processes e.g focused attention and working memory.

In this project, subjects will be engaged in a verbal fluency test, a type of cognitive experiment. The recorded EEG waves will also be analyzed using wavelet analysis and sample entropy to derive a correlation between the subjects’ EEG waves and their engagement in the cognitive experiment.

From the quantitative results, it has been identified that there is an increase in the delta and theta activity and the complexity of the EEG wave during the task phase of the experiment. These results derive to the conclusion that cognitive processes e.g focused attention is associated with delta and theta type of EEG wave.