Latency analysis of single auditory evoked M100 responses by spatio-temporal filtering

Appropriate spatial filtering followed by temporal filtering is well suited for the single-trial analysis of multi-channel magnetoencephalogram or electroencephalogram recordings. This is demonstrated by the results of a single-trial latency analysis obtained for auditory evoked M100 responses from nine subjects using two different stimulation frequencies. Spatial filters were derived automatically from the data via noise-adjusted principle component analysis, and single-trial latencies were estimated from the signal phase after complex bandpass filtering. For each of the two stimulation frequencies, estimated single-trial latencies were consistent with results obtained from a standard approach using averaged evoked responses. The quality of the estimated single-trial latencies was additionally assessed by their ability to separate between the two different stimulation frequencies. As a result, more than 80% of the single trials can be classified correctly by their estimated latencies.