Study of Human Sensory Perception

A Combined fMRI and Electrophysiological Study of Human Sensory Perception

This study will help describe how the human brain works when a person sees something, hears something, learns something, or thinks about something by recording brain activity that occurs when the person does a series of computer tasks. This study will be offered to people who are in the hospital to be monitored for epilepsy by using electrodes placed in the brain. The study will record brain activity that occurs when a patient does a memory task, for example.

Study Overview

• Status: Completed
• Conditions: Epilepsy

Detailed Description

Patients who have elected to have invasive electrophysiological monitoring for epileptic activity are invited to participate in this study. While the electrodes are in place, patients are asked to view several scenarios on a laptop computer. During these scenarios, for example, patients are asked to click a mouse button if they see the same picture twice in a row or to remember a film clip of a scooter ride. Trigger points in the computer scenarios are recorded on a separate channel alongside the brain-wave activity to allow correlation between the brain activity and the task requested in the scenario. Using this technique, researchers can determine what areas of the brain were active during recognition or recall activities.

• Study Type: Observational
• Enrollment (Actual): 6

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• United States
  • Washington
    • Seattle, Washington, United States, 98122
      • Swedish Medical Center Epilepsy Center

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: 10 years to 65 years (Child, Adult, Older Adult)
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: No
• Genders Eligible for Study: All

• Sampling Method: Non-Probability Sample

Study Population

People between 10 and 65 years old diagnosed with epilepsy who will have invasive eletrophysioloigcal monitoring as part of a clinical evaluation for epilepsy treatment.

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• Primary diagnosis of epilepsy
• Between 10 and 65 years of age
• Scheduled to undergo invasive electrophysiological monitoring as part of a clinical evaluation for epilepsy treatment

Exclusion Criteria:

• None

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Number of groups / cohorts

1

Cohorts and Interventions

Group / Cohort
Epileptics having invasive monitoring; People between 10 and 65 years of age with epilepsy and who are coming in to have invasive electrophysiological monitoring.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Reveal induced neuronal activity	In the preprocessing stage, potential electrical interference will be removed from the raw signal using a linear-phase notch FIR filter. Each electrode will be de-referenced by subtraction of the averaged signal of all the electrodes, thus discarding non-neuronal contributions. Time-frequency decompositions will be calculated for each electrode based on Fourier transform amplitude spectrum in a 160ms sliding window with average step size of 6ms. This process is done per trial and averaged across trials in order to reveal induced neuronal activity, which is not time-locked to the stimuli.	Approximately 3 hours over the course of 2-3 days during in-patient invasive electrophysiological monitoring.

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Calculate evoked response potentials.	Evoked response potentials (ERPs) will be calculated by averaging the raw signal across the presentation of a specific stimulus for each patient, such as all samples of patients watching the movie clip.	Approximately 3 hours over the course of 2-3 days during in-patient invasive electrophysiological monitoring.

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: Swedish Medical Center
• Collaborators: Weizmann Institute of Science

Publications and helpful links

General Publications

• Hasson U, Nir Y, Levy I, Fuhrmann G, Malach R. Intersubject synchronization of cortical activity during natural vision. Science. 2004 Mar 12;303(5664):1634-40. doi: 10.1126/science.1089506.
• Allison T, Puce A, Spencer DD, McCarthy G. Electrophysiological studies of human face perception. I: Potentials generated in occipitotemporal cortex by face and non-face stimuli. Cereb Cortex. 1999 Jul-Aug;9(5):415-30. doi: 10.1093/cercor/9.5.415.
• Grill-Spector K, Kushnir T, Hendler T, Malach R. The dynamics of object-selective activation correlate with recognition performance in humans. Nat Neurosci. 2000 Aug;3(8):837-43. doi: 10.1038/77754.
• Hasson U, Hendler T, Ben Bashat D, Malach R. Vase or face? A neural correlate of shape-selective grouping processes in the human brain. J Cogn Neurosci. 2001 Aug 15;13(6):744-53. doi: 10.1162/08989290152541412.
• Kirsch HE, Sepkuty JP, Crone NE. Multimodal functional mapping of sensorimotor cortex prior to resection of an epileptogenic perirolandic lesion. Epilepsy Behav. 2004 Jun;5(3):407-10. doi: 10.1016/j.yebeh.2004.02.001.
• Kleinman JT, Sepkuty JP, Hillis AE, Lenz FA, Heidler-Gary J, Gingis L, Crone NE. Spatial neglect during electrocortical stimulation mapping in the right hemisphere. Epilepsia. 2007 Dec;48(12):2365-8. doi: 10.1111/j.1528-1167.2007.01196.x. Epub 2007 Jul 21.
• Kreiman G, Hung CP, Kraskov A, Quiroga RQ, Poggio T, DiCarlo JJ. Object selectivity of local field potentials and spikes in the macaque inferior temporal cortex. Neuron. 2006 Feb 2;49(3):433-45. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2005.12.019.
• Liu J, Newsome WT. Local field potential in cortical area MT: stimulus tuning and behavioral correlations. J Neurosci. 2006 Jul 26;26(30):7779-90. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.5052-05.2006.
• Logothetis NK. Single units and conscious vision. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 1998 Nov 29;353(1377):1801-18. doi: 10.1098/rstb.1998.0333.
• Mukamel R, Gelbard H, Arieli A, Hasson U, Fried I, Malach R. Coupling between neuronal firing, field potentials, and FMRI in human auditory cortex. Science. 2005 Aug 5;309(5736):951-4. doi: 10.1126/science.1110913.
• Niessing J, Ebisch B, Schmidt KE, Niessing M, Singer W, Galuske RA. Hemodynamic signals correlate tightly with synchronized gamma oscillations. Science. 2005 Aug 5;309(5736):948-51. doi: 10.1126/science.1110948.
• Nir Y, Fisch L, Mukamel R, Gelbard-Sagiv H, Arieli A, Fried I, Malach R. Coupling between neuronal firing rate, gamma LFP, and BOLD fMRI is related to interneuronal correlations. Curr Biol. 2007 Aug 7;17(15):1275-85. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2007.06.066.
• Privman E, Nir Y, Kramer U, Kipervasser S, Andelman F, Neufeld MY, Mukamel R, Yeshurun Y, Fried I, Malach R. Enhanced category tuning revealed by intracranial electroencephalograms in high-order human visual areas. J Neurosci. 2007 Jun 6;27(23):6234-42. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4627-06.2007.

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start: March 1, 2012
• Primary Completion (Actual): November 1, 2014
• Study Completion (Actual): November 1, 2014

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: June 5, 2012
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: June 6, 2012
• First Posted (Estimate): June 7, 2012

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Estimate): December 8, 2014
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: December 4, 2014
• Last Verified: September 1, 2014

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Keywords: Epilepsy; Invasive monitoring; Human sensory perception
• Additional Relevant MeSH Terms: Brain Diseases; Central Nervous System Diseases; Nervous System Diseases; Epilepsy
• Other Study ID Numbers: 5146S-11