A Novel, Modular and Hybrid Method and Software for the Reduction of AEP Artifacts in TMS-EEG Studies

Abstract

Extended Abstract TMS can contaminate concurrent EEG recordings with Auditory Evoked Potentials (AEPs) which are caused by the perceived impulsive acoustic noise of the TMS coils. These percepts may be formed either by air- or bone-conducted hearing [1]-[3]. To overcome this issue, previous research has proposed two general directions for AEP artifact reduction/removal, namely, EEG signal processing-based elimination and/or AEP suppression using various auditory masking stimuli [1], [4]. Herein, we are introducing an alternative hybrid approach, which features: measures of the subject’s hearing acuity. All three features operate in tandem in order to provide a maximally efficient solution for AEP artifacts, by reducing the in a cohort of healthy subjects (n=10) and patients with epilepsy (n=10) under four conditions (i.e., resting EEG with and without acoustic mask and sham TMS-EEG with and without acoustic mask at various stimulus intensity levels). Preliminary encouraging results of the proposed approach in terms of maintaining masking noise at comfortable levels and efficiency of AEP suppression are presented.