Identification of performance-related EEG phenotypes for neurofeedback training

Abstract

With aging the body and the brain undergoes several changes. One of these changes is the loss of neuroplasticity, which leads to the decrease of cognitive abilities. Hence the necessity of stopping or reversing these changes is of utmost importance to contemporary society. In the present work, using electroencephalogram and the Wisconsin card sorting test (WCST) we try to understand which are the performance-related EEG phenotypes. The test was applied to young and elderly subjects due to the expected cognitive deficits with increasing age. The results showed that parietal theta desynchronization and the increase of the inter-frontal and intra-hemispheric coherence was associated to the group of good performers in the WCST. The implementation of an algorithm for low-resolution brain electromagnetic tomography (LORETA) showed that the WCST is not a specific test of the pre-frontal cortex. The identified performance-related EEG features have potential application on neurofeedback training protocols intended to hinder age-related cognitive decline.