Abstract
BackgroundHigh-frequency oscillations (HFOs) have received much attention in recent years, particularly in the clinical context. In addition to their application as a marker for pathological changes in patients with epilepsy, HFOs have also been brought into context with several physiological mechanisms. Furthermore, recent studies reported a relation between an increase of HFO rate and age in invasive EEG recordings. The present study aimed to investigate whether this relation can be replicated in scalp-EEG.MethodsWe recorded high-density EEG from 11 epilepsy patients at rest as well as during motor performance. Manual detection of HFOs was performed by two independent raters following a standardized protocol. Patients were grouped by age into younger (<25 years) and older (>50 years) participants.ResultsNo significant difference of HFO-rates was found between groups [U = 10.5, p = 0.429, r = 0.3].ConclusionsLack of replicability of the age effect of HFOs may be due to the local propagation patterns of age-related HFOs occurring in deep structures. However, limitations such as small sample size, decreased signal-to-noise ratio as compared to invasive recordings, as well as HFO-mimicking artifacts must be considered.
Highlights
In the last 2 decades high frequency oscillations (HFOs) have been studied extensively [1, 2]
Using scalp-EEG we examined a possible relationship between age and HFO activity by comparing HFO rates between older and younger patients suffering from epilepsy as well as healthy controls
Because of the relatively small number of identified ripples, we looked at the overall HFO rate, where in addition to ripples, we included unclear HFOs (HFO = ripples + uHFO)
Summary
In the last 2 decades high frequency oscillations (HFOs) have been studied extensively [1, 2]. These HFOs are considered as oscillatory field potentials in the gamma- or high gamma band standing out of the oscillatory background activity showing a regular morphology that can be classified as ripples (80–250 Hz) and fast ripples (>250 Hz) [3]. High-frequency oscillations (HFOs) have received much attention in recent years, in the clinical context. In addition to their application as a marker for pathological changes in patients with epilepsy, HFOs have been brought into context with several physiological mechanisms. Recent studies reported a relation between an increase of HFO rate and age in invasive EEG recordings. The present study aimed to investigate whether this relation can be replicated in scalp-EEG
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