Abásolo D, Hornero R, Espino P, Alvarez D, Poza J
ETS Ingenieros de Telecomunicación, University of Valladolid, Camino del Cementerio s/n, Spain.
Physiol Meas. 2006 Mar;27(3):241-53. doi: 10.1088/0967-3334/27/3/003. Epub 2006 Jan 13.
Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common neurodegenerative disorder. Although a definite diagnosis is only possible by necropsy, a differential diagnosis with other types of dementia and with major depression should be attempted. The aim of this study was to analyse the electroencephalogram (EEG) background activity of AD patients to test the hypothesis that the regularity of the AD patients' EEG is higher than that of age-matched controls. We recorded the EEG from 19 scalp electrodes in 11 AD patients and 11 age-matched controls. Two different methods were used to estimate the regularity of the EEG background activity: spectral entropy (SpecEn) and sample entropy (SampEn). We did not find significant differences between AD patients and control subjects' EEGs with SpecEn. On the other hand, AD patients had significantly lower SampEn values than control subjects (p < 0.01) at electrodes P3, P4, O1 and O2. Our results show an increase of EEG regularity in AD patients. These findings suggest that nonlinear analysis of the EEG with SampEn could yield essential information and may contribute to increasing the insight into brain dysfunction in AD in ways which are not possible with more classical and conventional statistical methods.
阿尔茨海默病（AD）是最常见的神经退行性疾病。虽然只有通过尸检才能做出明确诊断，但应尝试与其他类型的痴呆症和重度抑郁症进行鉴别诊断。本研究的目的是分析AD患者的脑电图（EEG）背景活动，以检验AD患者EEG的规律性高于年龄匹配对照组这一假设。我们记录了11例AD患者和11例年龄匹配对照组的19个头皮电极的EEG。使用两种不同的方法来估计EEG背景活动的规律性：频谱熵（SpecEn）和样本熵（SampEn）。我们发现，使用SpecEn时，AD患者和对照组的EEG之间没有显著差异。另一方面，在电极P3、P4、O1和O2处，AD患者的SampEn值显著低于对照组（p < 0.01）。我们的结果显示AD患者的EEG规律性增加。这些发现表明，用SampEn对EEG进行非线性分析可以产生重要信息，并可能有助于以更经典和传统统计方法无法实现的方式，加深对AD脑功能障碍的理解。
