High-resolution electroencephalogram (EEG) mapping: scalp charge layer

Abstract

The neural electrical signal related to the human brain function is one of the tracks to understanding ourselves. Various electroencephalogram imaging techniques have been developed to reveal spatial information on neural activities in the brain from scalp recordings, such as Laplacian, equivalent source layer and potential. Physically, these methods may be classified into two categories: scalp surface or cortical surface based techniques. In this work, the focus is on the scalp surface based equivalent charge layer (ECL), with a comparison to the scalp potential with different references and scalp Laplacian (SL). The contents include theoretical analysis and numeric evaluation of simulated data and real alpha (8–12 Hz) data. The results confirm the fact that SL and ECL are of higher spatial resolution than various scalp potential maps, and for SL and ECL, SL is of higher resolution but more sensitive to noise.