Performance of novel dry electrode EEG cap for evoked potential and band-power activity detection

Common applications of electro-encephalography (EEG), in both research and clinical practice, are detection of fast, stimulus locked evoked potential (EP) responses and quantification of slower changes in EEG band-power termed event related synchronization/ desynchronization (ERD/S). These correspond to categorized electrophysiological phenomena associated with various mental states through prior observations. In this paper we present the technical performance of a dry electrode EEG cap previously introduced for demanding ERD/S applications such as brain-computer interfacing, for trial-averaging applications. Results are shown for N100 auditory evoked potential (AEP) as well as ERD/S EEG spectral estimation. The novel cap can allow for EEG experiments which can be set-up within approx. 5 minutes and provide data of similar quality to those traditionally obtained with gel-based caps, without the need for washing subject's hair or other preparative/follow-up procedures to the experiment.