EEG study of visual reactivity in aphasic patients

Abstract

QEEG measures may have predicitive value in post-stroke aphasia.

Spectral Resting-State EEG (rsEEG) in Chronic Aphasia Is Reliable, Sensitive, and Correlates With Functional Behavior

“…Our results demonstrated moderate to good reliability for healthy controls and PWAs in alpha, beta, and theta bands, with relatively poorer reliability in the delta band. Previous research has examined changes in spectral rsEEG over time as a response to treatment (e.g., Rozelle and Budzynski, 1995;Stojanovic et al, 2013). Our results support the use of spectral rsEEG in this manner and strengthen the inferences that can be drawn from such studies.…”

“…Both eyes-open and eyes-closed conditions were used as there is inconsistency in the literature, with most reporting only the eyes-closed condition (e.g., Dubovik et al, 2013;Finnigan et al, 2016), others reporting only the eyes-open condition (e.g., Herron et al, 2014;Wu et al, 2015), and some reporting both conditions (e.g., Cuspineda et al, 2003;Stojanovic et al, 2013). In addition, research indicates that these conditions are not equivalent, even as individuals age, suggesting a need to determine psychometric properties for each condition separately (Barry et al, 2007;Barry and De Blasio, 2017).…”

“…It was posited that these permanent changes in rsEEG were a result of neural adaptations to support cognition in the face of a lesion. Some researchers have also examined spectral EEG before and after rehabilitation in sub-acute and chronic PWAs (Rozelle and Budzynski, 1995;Stojanovic et al, 2013). A single case study of an English-speaking person with chronic non-fluent aphasia investigated the use of spectral EEG as a biofeedback method to lower theta and increase beta activity (Rozelle and Budzynski, 1995).…”

“…Following training, the participant demonstrated significantly reduced theta activity in spectral rsEEG, alongside behavioral improvements in speech, language, motor, mood, and cognitive domains. More recently, a study investigated aphasia treatment response in a sample of 32 Serbian-speaking PWAs (26 non-fluent, 6 fluent) using spectral rsEEG to compare the hemispheric and regional symmetry of delta, theta, alpha and beta power (Stojanovic et al, 2013). Prior to treatment, hemispheric and regional asymmetry were increased, and variability was decreased, in PWAs compared to 86 age-and sex-matched healthy controls.…”

“…Acceptable specificity and test-retest reliability has yet to be investigated or established for specific patient populations. Despite this very limited psychometric evidence to support the use of spectral EEG as a repeated measure, it is already being used in this manner in research (e.g., Rozelle and Budzynski, 1995;Hensel et al, 2004;Stojanovic et al, 2013;Wu et al, 2015;Petrovic et al, 2017). Defining specificity and reliability of spectral rsEEG measures utilizing varied electrode montages post-stroke is critical to ensuring appropriate application of these measures and preventing research waste (for a discussion of research waste as it pertains to biomarkers, see Ioannidis and Bossuyt, 2017).…”