The Objective Assessment of Event-Related Potentials: An Influence of Chronic Pain on ERP Parameters

 Maksim Zhuravlev1,2  · Mikhail Novikov3  · Ruzanna Parsamyan3  · Anton Selskii2,3  · Anastasiya Runnova1,3
1 Coordinating Center for Fundamental Research, National Medical Research Center for Therapy and Preventive Medicine, Moscow 101000, Russia 
2 Institute of Physics, Saratov State University, Saratov 410012, Russia 
3 Department of Fundamental Research in Neurocardiology, Institute of Cardiological Research, Saratov State Medical University, Saratov 410012, Russia

Abstract

The article presents an original method for the automatic assessment of the quality of event-related potentials (ERPs), based on the calculation of the coefficient ε, which describes the compliance of recorded ERPs with some statistically significant parameters. This method was used to analyze the neuropsychological EEG monitoring of patients suffering from migraines. The frequency of migraine attacks was correlated with the spatial distribution of the coefficients ε, calculated for EEG channels. More than 15 migraine attacks per month was accompanied by an increase in calculated values in the occipital region. Patients with infrequent migraines exhibited maximum quality in the frontal areas. The automatic analysis of spatial maps of the coefficient ε demonstrated a statistically significant difference between the two analyzed groups with different means of migraine attack numbers per month.


Keywords
Event-related potential; Chronic migraine; ERP quality; Automatic evaluation