Electrophysiological approaches in the study of cognitive development outside the lab

GATTI MATHIAS; KAMIENKOWSKI JUAN; PIETTO MARCOS LUIS; LIPINA SEBASTIAN

Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires

Congreso; 2nd FALAN Congress; 2016

Federation of Latin-American and Caribbean Societies for Neuroscience (FALAN)

p { margin-bottom: 0.25cm; direction: ltr; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 120%; }p.western { font-family: "Liberation Serif","Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; }p.cjk { font-family: "Noto Sans CJK SC Regular"; font-size: 12pt; }p.ctl { font-family: "FreeSans"; font-size: 12pt; }The electrophysiological level of analysis of cognitive developmentprovides high-temporal resolution information of the neural activityunderlying the dynamics of neurocognitive processes. Thus, suchmethodologies have important implications in building knowledge oncognitive development during childhood. However, electrophysiological(EEG) research is not generally applied beyond laboratory settings,adding some confounding variation related to the new environment andlimitations regarding the number of experimental sessions and thesize of the final sample. In addition, EEG apparatus typicallyimposes limitations for use outside the laboratory, such as anincrement of noise, and more complicated logistics andtransportation. Therefore, it is important to broaden the efforts inextending the design and implementation of these approaches.Recently, low-cost portable electroencephalography (EEG) equipmentsare being released. These EEG systems comprise a smaller array ofelectrodes that transfered the data via wireless -at also smallersample rates-, and require little adjustment and time-montage. Thismake them ideal for their use outside laboratory setting, forinstance at school. Needless to say, it has been shown that thistechnology has typically poorer quality signal than standard researchdevices, thus robust paradigms and new analytic methods are needed todeal with these issues. In this regard, efforts aimed at transferringlaboratory methodologies to be applied in different developmentalcontexts would result in the possibility of extending their inclusionin studies with greater ecological value. Event-related potentials (ERPs) are useful for quality testing ofelectrophysiological data across different EEG systems, because theyare simple, fast to compute, offers high temporal resolution andaccuracy. In addition, there is an extensive ERP research whichfacilitates comparison and interpretation of different findings. Inthis study we explored through different paradigms if event-relatedpotentials (ERPs) measured using a portable EEG system wereequivalent in amplitude and latency to those measured by ahigh-quality EEG system. Particularly, in this poster we presentresults from a Go/No-Go task and evaluate amplitude and latency of N1and N2, and from the effect size between conditions.