Intracranial Studies of Cognition in Humans

HESSE, EUGENIA

Encyclopedia of Behavioral Neuroscience

Elsevier

Año: 2021; p. 203 - 219

Intracranial electroencephalography (iEEG) is a technique used to record signals from invasive electrodes mostly implanted inpatients suffering from drug resistant epilepsy (refractory epilepsy), and less frequently in patients with brain tumors or Parkinson?sDisease. Although this technique was designed for diagnostic and/or treatment purposes in humans, it presents a unique window ofopportunity for the study of human cognition. Since electrodes are implanted in the human cortex, direct measures of neural activityare recorded, in opposition to other non-invasive neuroimaging techniques, thus presenting advantageous characteristics. However,given its invasive nature, opportunities to study cognition through iEEG are scarce and valuable. Here we will present an overview ofthe development and technical characteristics of iEEG, and evidence gathered exclusively on implants performed for the treatmentof refractory epilepsy on multiple areas of cognition: emotion, memory, language, consciousness, perception and the default modenetwork (DMN).