A Preliminary Study on Normalized Pattern-Reversal Peripheral Field SSVEPs as a Potential Objective Indicator of...

Currently, the test for useful field of view (UFOV) typically relies on subjective feedback for detecting peripheral targets while attending to a central target. Steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP) recorded from the occipital region of the brain has been frequently used as an objective alternative to replace subjective responses. Our aim was to investigate if a short screening test can approximate UFOV performance objectively.

We recorded SSVEPs during a simple peripheral task and a UFOV task with and without distractors as well as 30-second offline SSVEPs for eight participants. In all tasks, a peripheral annulus ring of checkered reversal pattern was concurrently presented to the participants to elicit SSVEPs.

Orthogonal linear regression analysis found that normalized SSVEP during the UFOV task is predictive of peripheral target detection accuracy (F(1,6) = 16.250, P < 0.01, n = 8) for a task with peripheral distractors. However, this is not the case for a task without distractors (F(1,6) = 0.397, P = 0.552), possibly due to near-perfect accuracy across most participants. Offline normalized SSVEPs also only predicted the peripheral target detection accuracy (F(1,6) = 26.799, P < 0.01) for the UFOV task with peripheral distractors.

Difficult peripheral target detection with distractors is required to differentiate UFOV performance in healthy young adults. The results suggested that offline normalized SSVEPs elicited by 30 seconds of pattern-reversal checkered annulus from the peripheral vision field can identify individuals with good UFOV performance under the stress of a difficult peripheral task.