F3-03-03: replicating lab electrophysiology with older users in the home, using gamified dry eeg

Mobile EEG equipment is now starting to enter clinical use, to provide objective decision support in smaller clinics and practices. Despite this improved accessibility, it is still limited to infrequent sampling in a medicalised environment. Wearable electronics and dry sensor technologies now make repeated recordings outside of the clinic possible, and gamification may be used to encourage consistent engagement, but use of novel technology in uncontrolled environments raises concerns about data quality and validity. We evaluate whether it is feasible for representative older adults to regularly record clinically relevant EEG, unsupervised in the home. Two large home-based studies were conducted in Belfast and Dublin. The first study recruited 90 healthy older adults (40-80yrs); and the second 60 healthy adults (55+yrs), half of which had unusually low short-term memory performance for their cohort (WMS logical memory test, adjusted for premorbid IQ), just above the threshold for Mild Cognitive Impairment. Users participated for a number of weeks, at a rate of >4 sessions per week, and played gamified versions of standards tasks on a tablet, including the Erikson flanker, the 2-stimulus oddball, and resting state. Synchronised EEG was recorded simulaneously using a self-use 16 channel dry EEG wireless headset. Major morphological features and topographical patterns of classical ERPs were replicated in data recorded by non-expert users up to the age of 80 years, unsupervised in the home, for a number of gamified tasks. Group-level differences in amplitude and latency of the ERN/Pe and P300 components were observed after stratification by age and by cognitive performance, as predicted by the literature.