Abstract
The influence of reference is a critical issue for the electroencephalography (EEG) and event-related potentials (ERPs) studies. However, previous investigations concentrated less on the location of source at a systematic neuroscience level. Our goal was to examine the EEG signal associated with the locations from a common network parcellation of the human brain function, offering a system perspective of the influence of EEG reference. In our simulation, vertices uniformly distributed in eight large-scale brain networks were adopted to generate the scalp EEG. The brain networks contain the visual, somatomotor, dorsal attention, ventral attention, limbic, frontoparietal, default networks, and the deep brain structure. The distributions of the most sensitive and neutral electrodes were calculated for each network based on the lead-field matrix. While the most sensitive electrode had a network-specific symmetric pattern, the electrodes in scalp surface had approximately equal chance to be the most neutral electrode. Simulated data were referenced at the FCz, the Oz, the mean mastoids (MM), the average (AVE), and the infinity reference obtained by the reference electrode standardization technique (REST). Intriguingly, the relative error followed the pattern REST<AVE<MM<(FCz, Oz), regardless of the number of electrodes and signal-to-noise ratios. Our findings suggested that REST was a potentially preferable reference for all large-scale networks and AVE virtually performed as REST under several conditions. As EEG and ERPs experiments within the same behavioral domain always have activations in some specific brain networks, the comparisons revealed here may provide a valuable recommendation for reference selection in clinical and basic researches.
Highlights
Electroencephalography (EEG) is a real-time, noninvasive measure of neuronal activity, which is considered as a valuable and cost-effective tool for the study of brain function in a wide range of clinical and basic research
Our findings suggested that reference electrode standardization technique (REST) was a potentially preferable reference for all large-scale networks and AVE virtually performed as REST under several conditions
The influence of reference electrodes (FCz, Oz, mean mastoids (MM), AVE) and the infinity reference recovered by the REST method were investigated through the simulated EEG potentials under different densities of electrode and signal-to-noise ratios
Summary
Electroencephalography (EEG) is a real-time, noninvasive measure of neuronal activity, which is considered as a valuable and cost-effective tool for the study of brain function in a wide range of clinical and basic research. An unsolved critical issue for the EEG studies is the choice of the EEG reference Both the evoked and spontaneous potentials of neural activities are influenced by reference, because each EEG electrode only yields information about the difference of electrical activity between two positions on the head (Nunez, 1981; Hagemann et al, 2001; Yao, 2001). It is indispensable to set a physical reference during EEG recordings and the signal in each electrode is obtained as the difference between the electric potentials in its location and in the location of the reference electrode. If the neural electric potential near the reference electrode is not neutral, the measurement will be contaminated inevitably at all the other electrode sites, and further distorts the temporal dynamic analysis and power spectra analysis of the EEG recording. The preferential use of different reference schemes has evolved for individual research teams and led to de facto conventions for specific research fields or clinical practice (Kayser and Tenke, 2010)
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