Ashmaig Omer, Hamilton Liberty S, Modur Pradeep, Buchanan Robert J, Preston Alison R, Watrous Andrew J
Department of Neurology, Dell Medical School, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, United States.
Center for Learning and Memory, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, United States.
Front Hum Neurosci. 2021 Nov 22;15:726998. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2021.726998. eCollection 2021.
Intracranial recordings in epilepsy patients are increasingly utilized to gain insight into the electrophysiological mechanisms of human cognition. There are currently several practical limitations to conducting research with these patients, including patient and researcher availability and the cognitive abilities of patients, which limit the amount of task-related data that can be collected. Prior studies have synchronized clinical audio, video, and neural recordings to understand naturalistic behaviors, but these recordings are centered on the patient to understand their seizure semiology and thus do not capture and synchronize audiovisual stimuli experienced by patients. Here, we describe a platform for cognitive monitoring of neurosurgical patients during their hospitalization that benefits both patients and researchers. We provide the full specifications for this system and describe some example use cases in perception, memory, and sleep research. We provide results obtained from a patient passively watching TV as proof-of-principle for the naturalistic study of cognition. Our system opens up new avenues to collect more data per patient using real-world behaviors, affording new possibilities to conduct longitudinal studies of the electrophysiological basis of human cognition under naturalistic conditions.
癫痫患者的颅内记录越来越多地被用于深入了解人类认知的电生理机制。目前，对这些患者进行研究存在一些实际限制，包括患者和研究人员的可及性以及患者的认知能力，这限制了可以收集的与任务相关的数据量。先前的研究已经将临床音频、视频和神经记录同步，以了解自然行为，但这些记录以患者为中心，旨在了解他们的癫痫发作症状学，因此没有捕捉并同步患者所经历的视听刺激。在这里，我们描述了一个在神经外科患者住院期间进行认知监测的平台，这对患者和研究人员都有益。我们提供了该系统的完整规格，并描述了感知、记忆和睡眠研究中的一些示例用例。我们提供了从一名患者被动看电视获得的结果，作为认知自然主义研究的原理证明。我们的系统开辟了新途径，可以利用现实世界的行为为每位患者收集更多数据，为在自然条件下对人类认知的电生理基础进行纵向研究提供了新的可能性。
