Stability of EEG inter- and intrahemispheric correlation in women

EEG correlation and coherence analyses have been used to study functional relationships between cortical regions, and found to vary as a function of physiological conditions, sex hormones and cognitive processes. However, the utility of serial EEG studies is dependent upon the within-subject reliability of repeated EEG recordings. The present study was undertaken to assess the within-subject and within-group stability of EEG correlations in a group of young women (n = 9). EEG was recorded during relaxed wakefulness at F3, F4, C3, C4, P3, P4, O1 and O2 for 11 sessions, during 1 month. Ten artifact free 2-s epochs of EEG from each session were digitally filtered by means of a fast Fourier transform into 6 broad bands, and correlation coefficients between the EEG activity of every pair of derivations and bands were calculated in the time domain. All EEG features were submitted to principal component analysis and the first 5 components did not show significant differences between sessions (ANOVAs) for any band or pair of derivations. Alpha and beta showed higher variability whereas slow bands showed very little variability. The within-subject stability was assessed calculating multiple correlation coefficients between all EEG features of the eleven sessions of each subject: R-values ranged from 0.85 to 0.97. Present results indicate that the pattern of functional relationships between cortical regions during resting wakefulness is a stable characteristic for each woman at least over a 1 month period and that there are no significant group differences over sessions when menstrual phases are randomly distributed between women.