Evoked potentials and behavioral performance during different states of brain arousal

BACKGROUND: Previous studies compared evoked potentials (EPs) between several sleep stages but only one uniform wake state. However, using electroencephalography (EEG), several arousal states can be distinguished before sleep onset. Recently, the Vigilance Algorithm Leipzig (VIGALL 2.0) has been developed, which automatically attributes one out of seven EEG-vigilance stages to each 1-s EEG segment, ranging from stage 0 (associated with cognitively active wakefulness), to stages A1, A2 and A3 (associated with relaxed wakefulness), to stages B1 and B2/3 (associated with drowsiness) up to stage C (indicating sleep onset). Applying VIGALL, we specified the effects of these finely differentiated EEG-vigilance stages (indicating arousal states) on EPs (P1, N1, P2, N300, MMN and P3) and behavioral performance. Subjects underwent an ignored and attended condition of a 2-h eyes-closed oddball-task. Final analysis included 43 subjects in the ignored and 51 subjects in the attended condition. First, the effect of brain arousal states on EPs and performance parameters were analyzed between EEG-vigilance stages A (i.e. A1, A2 and A3 combined), B1 and B2/3&C (i.e. B2/3 and C combined). Then, in a second step, the effects of the finely differentiated EEG-vigilance stages were further specified. RESULTS: Comparing stages A versus B1 versus B2/3&C, a significant effect of EEG-vigilance stages on all behavioral parameters and all EPs, with exception of MMN and P3, was found. By applying VIGALL, a more detailed view of arousal effects on EP and performance was possible, such as the finding that the P2 showed no further significant increase in stages deeper than B1. Stage 0 did not differ from any of the A-stages. Within more fine-graded stages, such as the A-substages, EPs and performance only partially differed. However, these analyses were partly based on small sample sizes and future studies should take effort to get enough epochs of rare stages (such as A3 and C). CONCLUSIONS: A clear impact of arousal on EPs and behavioral performance was obtained, which emphasize the necessity to consider arousal effects when interpreting EPs. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12868-017-0340-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.