Brain Vital Signs: Expanding From the Auditory to Visual Modality

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Cognitive Science
• Biomedical Engineering

Background:

• The need for rapid, objective brain function assessment at the point-of-care has driven the development of brain vital signs.
• Current brain vital signs rely on auditory stimulation, posing challenges for individuals with hearing impairments.
• Translating brain vital signs to a visual modality is crucial for broader applicability.

Purpose of the Study:

• To demonstrate the feasibility of visual brain vital signs.
• To compare and normalize results from visual and auditory brain vital signs.
• To establish a visual stimulation protocol within the brain vital signs framework.

Main Methods:

• Collected electroencephalography (EEG) data from 34 healthy adults using a 64-channel system.
• Developed comparable visual and auditory stimulation sequences to elicit N100, P300, and N400 event-related potential (ERP) responses.
• Analyzed and compared ERP components across visual and auditory modalities.

Main Results:

• Visual brain vital signs were successfully elicited for N100, P300, and N400 responses.
• Attention processing (P300) showed high transferability between auditory and visual modalities, with correlated peak amplitudes.
• Modality differences were observed in P300 latencies and N400 amplitudes, suggesting systematic differences in processing auditory vs. visual language.

Conclusions:

• Visual brain vital signs are feasible and can be normalized against auditory measures.
• The P300 component is a robust marker transferable across auditory and visual stimuli.
• This study establishes a visual brain vital signs protocol, expanding the framework's utility across diverse populations and sensory modalities.