A QEEG Activation Methodology That Obtained 100% Accuracy in the Discrimination of Traumatic Brain Injured from Normal and Does the Learning Disabled Show the Brain Injury Pattern?

Abstract

Previous research has focused on determining whether the quantitative EEG (QEEG) can discriminate a traumatic brain injury (TBI) participant from a normal individual. The research has differed with respect to the critical variables involved in the discrimination task. All the research has limited its approach to the collection of eyes-closed data and most confine themselves to less than 32 Hz. The present research employs four cognitive activation tasks, an eyes-closed task, 19 locations, Spectral Correlation Coefficient (SCC) and phase algorithms in the beta2 frequency range (32–64 Hz), and the relative power of beta2 in six frontal locations to obtain 100% correct identification in original discriminant analysis. In addition, 50 random misclassifications—involving different participants—across the five tasks in a group of 196 subjects were correctly identified as misclassifications. To determine if a learning disability would show a similar pattern to a TBI pattern, a preliminary analysis of a group of 94 normal and learning disability (LD) participants were examined for their QEEG differences. The pattern evident in the analysis for the LD group (decreased coherence and phase alpha) was not the pattern evident in the TBI group, while the TBI pattern of decreased coherence and phase beta2 was not dominant in the LD group.