Comparing Simultaneous Scalp EEG Recordings from the OpenBCI Cyton and Brain Products BrainAmp

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Biomedical Engineering
• Cognitive Science

Background:

• Portable and affordable electroencephalography (EEG) amplifiers are crucial for large-scale neuroscience data collection.
• The open-source OpenBCI Cyton amplifier has potential but requires validation for cognitive neuroscience experiments, particularly event-related potentials (ERPs).

Purpose of the Study:

• To validate the OpenBCI Cyton amplifier against a gold-standard system for cognitive neuroscience ERP experiments.
• To assess the signal similarity and reliability of the Cyton amplifier across different ERP components.

Main Methods:

• Simultaneous recording of eight scalp electrodes using both OpenBCI Cyton and Brain Products BrainAmp amplifiers.
• Participants performed visual oddball (P3b), flankers (ERN), and word association (N400) tasks.
• Signal similarity quantified using Pearson r2, MAE, MAAPE, and within-component window statistics.

Main Results:

• Cyton signals demonstrated high similarity to BrainAmp signals (r2 = 97-100%, MAE ≈ 1 µV, MAAPE ≈ 20%) at key ERP sites.
• No significant differences in mean amplitudes were found within ERP component windows between the two amplifiers.
• Significant differences were observed in the standard deviations of the signals.

Conclusions:

• The OpenBCI Cyton amplifier records scalp EEG highly similar to research-grade equipment.
• This study provides the first multi-subject, concurrent scalp EEG validation of the Cyton across multiple ERP components.
• The findings validate the Cyton for cognitive neuroscience research and encourage the adoption of affordable, open-source tools.