L.P. Safonova1, A.N. Dmitriev2, V.S. Shiryaeva3, D.Yu. Kuleshov4

1–4 Bauman Moscow State Technical University (Moscow, Russia)

Improving the efficiency of diagnosis and operational control of the treatment of dementia and concomitant neurodegenerative diseases and vascular pathologies is an urgent problem. The severity of brain tissue disorders at the cellular-tissue level and functional disorders, deterioration of nerve conduction and blood circulation, determine the severity of cognitive dysfunction. The method of evoked potentials permits to control the state of nerve conduction and indirectly evaluate such cognitive functions as attention, memory, counting, logical analysis. The method of time resolved near infrared spectroscopy with the ability to quantify the absorbing and scattering properties of brain tissues makes it possible to assess structural changes in tissues, impaired blood supply and oxygen consumption, and the presence and severity of vascular pathologies. The aim of this work is to develop an experimental setup for synchronous recording and analysis of EEG and spectrophotometry signals while performing cognitive tests with photostimulation.

An experimental setup consists of a 32-channel electroencephalograph, a modern two-channel tissue oximeter with an implemented frequency-domain approach of the time-resolved near infrared spectroscopy method, a synchronization unit, a photostimulator, which is a 3x3 LED matrix, and a personal computer. EEG electrodes are placed on the subject's head according to the international "10-20" system. Cognitive evoked potentials are recorded and analyzed in the parietal region, in leads CzA2 and PzA1. The tissue oximeter signals were registered bilaterally using a dual-cerebral fiber optic probe. During photostimulation it was necessary to isolate a target stimulus from a stream of random stimuli. The target stimulus was the moment when one of the diodes of the LED matrix glowed. It was necessary to mentally isolate the moment it was turned on and count the number of times it happened. The study protocol included a background recording of signals at rest for three minutes in the beginning and at the end of the experiment, the moments of electrical impulses for synchronization of EEG and spectrophotometry signals, control stimuli for the experimental setup checking and two periods of stimulation: one period with a stimulus frequency rate of 1 Hz, the other with 2 Hz. The break between the two stimulation modes was 20 seconds. The tissue oximeter "OxiplexTS" allows you to register the absolute values of optical parameters, absorption coefficients and transport scattering, and the absolute values of the concentrations of oxygenated, deoxygenated and total hemoglobin per unit of the studied tissue volume, as well as tissue saturation. The processing of experimental data was carried out in the Matlab R2019b environment.

The received preliminary results confirm the possibility of isolation using coherent averaging and the possibility of quantitative assessment of stimulus-dependent cognitive evoked potentials in the parietal region. Spectrophotometric signals recorded in the area of the prefrontal cortex provide the way of registering neurovascular coupling and assessing local changes in cerebral hemodynamics, and demonstrate the informativeness of slow hemodynamic oscillations. The results of the pilot experiment confirm the effectiveness of the proposed approach, and allow us to adjust the technical solutions and stimulation test methodology for further research on control subjects and groups of patients with dementia.

Safonova L.P., Dmitriev A.N., Shiryaeva V.S., Kuleshov D.Yu. Control of cognitive functions using spectrophotometry and evoked potentials. Biomedicine Radioengineering. 2022. V. 25. № 6. Р. 5-17. DOI: https://doi.org/10.18127/j15604136-202206-01 (In Russian)

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