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To view the plugin source code, please visit the plugin’s GitHub repository.

BrainBeats

The BrainBeats toolbox, implemented as an EEGLAB plugin, allows joint processing and analysis of EEG and cardiovascular signals (ECG and PPG) for brain-heart interplay research. Both the general user interface (GUI) and command line are supported (see tutorial). BrainBeats currently supports: 1) Heartbeat-evoked potentials (HEP) and oscillations (HEO); 2) Extraction of EEG and HRV features; 3) Extraction of heart artifacts from EEG signals; 4) brain-heart coherence.

THREE METHODS AVAILABLE

1) Process EEG data for heartbeat-evoked potentials (HEP) analysis using ECG or PPG signals. Steps include signal processing of EEG and cardiovascular signals, inserting R-peak markers into the EEG data, segmentation around the R-peaks with optimal window length, time-frequency decomposition.

Example of HEP at the subject level, obtained from simultaneous EEG-ECG signals

Example of HEP at the subject level, obtained from simultaneous EEG-PPG signals

2) Extract EEG and HRV features from continuous data in the time, frequency, and nonlinear domains. - HRV time domain: SDNN, RMSSD, pNN50. - HRV frequency domain: VLF-power, ULF-power, LF-power, HF-power, LF:HF ratio, Total power. - HRV nonlinear domain: Poincare, fuzzy entropy, fractal dimension, PRSA.

- EEG frequency domain: average band power (delta, theta, alpha, beta, gamma), individual alpha frequency (IAF), alpha asymmetry.
- EEG nonlinear domain: fuzzy entropy, fractal dimension

Example of power spectral density (PSD) estimated from HRV and EEG data

Example of EEG features extracted from sample dataset

3) Remove heart components from EEG signals using ICA and ICLabel.

Example of extraction of cardiovascular components from EEG signals

4) Compute brain-heart coherence (beta version, please test and give feedback)

Example of several brain-heart coherence measures computed with BrainBeats from simultaneous EEG and ECG signals

Scalp topography showing scalp regions coherent with ECG signal for each frequency band

Requirements

  • MATLAB installed (https://www.mathworks.com/downloads)
  • EEGLAB installed (https://github.com/sccn/eeglab)
  • Some data containing EEG and cardiovascular signals (ECG or PPG) within the same file (i.e. recorded simultaneously). Or use the tutorial dataset provided in this repository located in the “sample_data” folder.

Step-by-step tutorial

See our publication for a step-by-step tutorial using the sample dataset: https://www.jove.com/t/65829/brainbeats-as-an-open-source-eeglab-plugin-to-jointly-analyze-eeg

Full-text preprint: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.01.543272v3.full

Version history

v1.5 (5/2/2024) - METHOD 4 (brain-heart coherence) added

v1.4 (4/1/2024) - publication JoVE (methods 1, 2, 3)