Comparison of Common Artifact Rejection Methods applied to Direct Cortical and Peripheral Stimulation in Human ECoG

Abstract

Invasive and non-invasive electrical stimulation are increasingly being used for the diagnosis and treatment of neurological disorders, and for characterizing neural circuits involved in a range of behaviors. However, there are substantial challenges in understanding the effects of stimulation on brain activity due to contamination of electrophysiological recordings by electrical stimulation artifacts. Here, we compare the performance of several artifact removal methods on electrocorticographic (ECoG) recordings with simultaneous cortical or peripheral stimulation in humans. We systematically evaluated the effects of stimulation modality, stimulation frequency, and neural recording frequency on the ability to reconstruct neural activity amplitude and phase data. We found that no single method was most effective for all situations, however it was possible to reconstruct key neural data features in every case. The development of optimized artifact removal procedures will facilitate clearer understanding of the biological effects of electrical stimulation and allow for improved therapeutic applications.