The Acceptability, Feasibility, and Utility of Portable Electroencephalography to Study Resting-State Neurophysiology in Rural Communities

Abstract

Electroencephalography (EEG) provides a non-invasive means to advancing our understanding of the development and function of the brain. However, the majority of the world’s population residing in low and middle income countries has historically been limited from contributing to, and thereby benefiting from, such neurophysiological research, due to lack of scalable validated methods of EEG data collection. In this study, we establish a standard operating protocol to collect approximately 3 min each of eyes-open and eyes-closed resting-state EEG data using a low-cost portable EEG device in rural households through formative work in the community. We then evaluate the acceptability of these EEG assessments to young children and feasibility of administering them through non-specialist workers. Finally, we describe properties of the EEG recordings obtained using this novel approach to EEG data collection. The formative phase was conducted with 9 families which informed protocols for consenting, child engagement strategies and data collection. The protocol was then implemented on 1265 families. 977 children (Mean age = 38.8 months, SD = 0.9) and 1199 adults (Mean age = 27.0 years, SD = 4) provided resting-state data for this study. 259 children refused to wear the EEG cap or removed it, and 58 children refused the eyes-closed recording session. Hardware or software issues were experienced during 30 and 25 recordings in eyes-open and eyes-closed conditions respectively. Disturbances during the recording sessions were rare and included participants moving their heads, touching the EEG headset with their hands, opening their eyes within the eyes-closed recording session, and presence of loud sounds in the testing environment. Similar to findings in laboratory-based studies from high-income settings, the percentage of recordings which showed an alpha peak was higher in eyes-closed than eyes-open condition, with the peak occurring most frequently in electrodes at O1 and O2 positions, and the mean frequency of the alpha peak was found to be lower in children (8.43 Hz, SD = 1.73) as compared to adults (10.71 Hz, SD = 3.96). We observed a deterioration in the EEG signal with prolonged device usage. This study demonstrates the acceptability, feasibility and utility of conducting EEG research at scale in a rural low-resource community, while highlighting its potential limitations, and offers the impetus needed to further refine the methods and devices and validate such scalable methods to overcome existing research inequity.

The sounds of science—a symphony for many instruments and voices: part II

“…Infancy and early childhood are key developmental ages in multiple respects, with psychological development running in parallel with motor development, language aquisition and learning in general (see Figure 11 [250,296,297] and references therein). With such rapid development, the early months and years offer rich evidence of how the human mind is formed [253], but they also present exceptional experimental challenges as infants, toddlers and young children are unwilling to be constrained and too young to reason with successfully (see, for example, the attrition rate in [298]). The acquisition of MRI-based brain scans requires subjects to remain still, with their heads in a fixed position in a noisy, unfamiliar and claustrophobic environment.…”

Eye Blink Identification and Removal From Single-Channel Eeg Using Emd With Energy Threshold and Adaptive Filter

“…Likewise, the nature of portable EEG that is simpler and less cumbersome to be set up than medical-grade EEG, making it stand out for use. As such, the interest in incorporating the portable EEG device into brain related research and application development is becoming increasingly ubiquitous [3]- [5]. A review of different brands of portable EEG is also made of their respective efficacy on different domains of brain related study [6].…”