Electrocorticographic high gamma activity versus electrical cortical stimulation mapping of naming

Abstract

Subdural electrocorticographic (ECoG) recordings in patients undergoing epilepsy surgery have shown that functional activation is associated with event-related broadband gamma activity in a higher frequency range (>70 Hz) than previously studied in human scalp EEG. To investigate the utility of this high gamma activity (HGA) for mapping language cortex, we compared its neuroanatomical distribution with functional maps derived from electrical cortical stimulation (ECS), which remains the gold standard for predicting functional impairment after surgery for epilepsy, tumours or vascular malformations. Thirteen patients had undergone subdural electrode implantation for the surgical management of intractable epilepsy. Subdural ECoG signals were recorded while each patient verbally named sequentially presented line drawings of objects, and estimates of event-related HGA (80-100 Hz) were made at each recording site. Routine clinical ECS mapping used a subset of the same naming stimuli at each cortical site. If ECS disrupted mouth-related motor function, i.e. if it affected the mouth, lips or tongue, naming could not be tested with ECS at the same cortical site. Because naming during ECoG involved these muscles of articulation, the sensitivity and specificity of ECoG HGA were estimated relative to both ECS-induced impairments of naming and ECS disruption of mouth-related motor function. When these estimates were made separately for 12 electrode sites per patient (the average number with significant HGA), the specificity of ECoG HGA with respect to ECS was 78% for naming and 81% for mouth-related motor function, and equivalent sensitivities were 38% and 46%, respectively. When ECS maps of naming and mouth-related motor function were combined, the specificity and sensitivity of ECoG HGA with respect to ECS were 84% and 43%, respectively. This study indicates that event-related ECoG HGA during confrontation naming predicts ECS interference with naming and mouth-related motor function with good specificity but relatively low sensitivity. Its favourable specificity suggests that ECoG HGA can be used to construct a preliminary functional map that may help identify cortical sites of lower priority for ECS mapping. Passive recordings of ECoG gamma activity may be done simultaneously at all electrode sites without the risk of after-discharges associated with ECS mapping, which must be done sequentially at pairs of electrodes. We discuss the relative merits of these two functional mapping techniques.

Neurophysiologic correlates of fMRI in human motor cortex

“…They have shown that broadband power increases, revealed at high frequencies, are typically local, on areas primarily involved in the task [Crone et al, 1998a;Miller et al, 2009b], and these high frequency changes correspond well to sites found with electrocortical stimulation of language and motor regions Sinai et al, 2005]. Power decreases in low frequency sensorimotor rhythms are distributed over larger areas of cortex [Crone et al, 1998b;Miller et al, 2007].…”

Power spectral density changes and language lateralization during covert object naming tasks measured with high-density EEG recordings

“…High c band activity and its dynamic time-dependent behavior have also been examined with subdural electrocorticographic (ECoG) recordings [20][21][22]. In our results with scalp EEGs, we do see some very focused high c band activity related to the language and baseline.…”

Advanced Neurotechnologies for Chronic Neural Interfaces: New Horizons and Clinical Opportunities

“…These human results have since been replicated and further extended for decoding of arm movements (Pistohl et al, 2008;Sanchez et al, 2008), flexion of individual fingers (Kubanek et al, 2007), and even specific aspects (such as the type of phoneme) of actual or imagined speech (Schalk et al, 2007a). Finally, several studies demonstrated that it is possible to combine general understanding of motor-related ECoG responses (Crone et al, 1998a,b;Aoki et al, 1999;Graimann et al, 2002;Sinai et al, 2005;Leuthardt et al, 2007;Miller et al, 2007) with the more specific understanding described above to implement different ECoG-based BCIs (Leuthardt et al, 2004;Wilson et al, 2006;Felton et al, 2007;Schalk et al, 2008) in humans using the BCI2000 software framework . These studies showed that ECoG supports accurate nonmuscular one-or two-dimensional movement control in humans with little subject training.…”