Abstract
Low-cost, portable electroencephalography (EEG) devices have become commercially available in the last 10 years. One such system, Emotiv’s EPOC, has been modified to allow event-related potential (ERP) research. Although the EPOC has been shown to provide data comparable to research-grade equipment and has been used in real-world settings, how EPOC performs without the electrical shielding, commonly used in research-grade laboratories, is yet to be systematically tested. In the current article we address this gap by conducting a simple EEG experiment in shielded and unshielded contexts. Participants (n = 13, mean age = 23.2 years, SD = 7.9) monitored the presentation of human versus wristwatch faces, responding whether the images were inverted or not. This method elicited the face-sensitive N170 ERP. In both shielded and unshielded contexts, the N170 amplitude was larger when participants viewed human faces and peaked later when a human face was inverted. More importantly, Bayesian analysis showed no difference in the N170 measured in the shielded and unshielded contexts. Further, the signal recorded in both contexts was highly correlated. The EPOC appears to reliably record EEG signals without a purpose-built electrically-shielded room.
Highlights
Electroencephalography (EEG) has traditionally been the province of those who can afford expensive equipment and specialised laboratory spaces
Especially given the lack of a noise-reducing pre-amplifier used with expensive research-grade EEG systems, it is important to establish the reliability of event-related potential (ERP) recorded inside and outside an electrically shielded room using consumer-grade EEG systems
The intra-class correlations (ICCs) comparing the waveforms in shielded and unshielded contexts were medium in strength and all significant based on the confidence intervals not overlapping with zero
Summary
Electroencephalography (EEG) has traditionally been the province of those who can afford expensive equipment and specialised laboratory spaces. While DRL is aimed at attenuating ambient electrical noise via active cancelation, the quality of the system in EPOC is yet to be systematically tested Such a comparison is critical for determining the reliability of EEG recordings beyond research settings. Establishing that shielding is not required for reliable EEG recording provides assurance for using EPOC outside traditional settings, for example, in classrooms (e.g., de Wit et al, 2017; Dikker et al, 2017) To address this question, we compared EPOC’s ERP recordings in two settings; an electrically-shielded laboratory and an unshielded quite room. The intra-class correlation was high, indicating similar waveforms in both contexts These results suggest that EPOC would be well-suited to record reliable EEG data in at least some contexts outside of typical research settings and may be warranted in such places as schools or doctor’s surgeries
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