INDIVIDUAL-DIFFERENCES IN BRAIN DYNAMICS - IMPORTANT IMPLICATIONS FORTHE CALCULATION OF EVENT-RELATED BAND POWER

Measures of event-related band power such as event-related desynchroni zation (ERD) are conventionally analyzed within fixed frequency bands, although it is known that EEG frequency varies as a function of a var iety of factors. The question of how to determine these frequency band s for ERD analyses is discussed and a new method is proposed. The rati onale of this new method is to adjust the frequency bands to the indiv idual alpha frequency (IAF) for each subject and to determine the band width for the alpha and theta bands as a percentage of IAF. As an exam ple, if IAF equals 12 Hz, the widths of the alpha and theta bands are larger as compared to a subject with an IAF of, e.g., only 8 Hz. The r esults of an oddball paradigm show that the proposed method is superio r to methods that are based on fixed frequencies and fixed bandwidths.