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Stability and distribution of steady-state somatosensory evoked potentials elicited by vibro-tactile stimulation

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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 %.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. BCI Lab, Institute for Knowledge Discovery, Graz University of Technology, Krenngasse 37, 8010, Graz, Austria

    Christian Breitwieser, Vera Kaiser, Christa Neuper & Gernot R. Müller-Putz

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Graz, Universitätsplatz 2/DG, 8010, Graz, Austria

    Christa Neuper

Authors
  1. Christian Breitwieser
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  2. Vera Kaiser
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  3. Christa Neuper
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  4. Gernot R. Müller-Putz
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Correspondence to Gernot R. Müller-Putz.

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Breitwieser, C., Kaiser, V., Neuper, C. et al. Stability and distribution of steady-state somatosensory evoked potentials elicited by vibro-tactile stimulation. Med Biol Eng Comput 50, 347–357 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11517-012-0877-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11517-012-0877-9

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