Independent component analysis applied to the P600 component of event-related potentials

The analysis of the P600 component of Event-related Potentials (ERPs) has attracted attention due to its relation to covert cognitive mechanisms, in connection to memory processes. The component may often be low-amplitude, compared to other components such as the P300. Independent Component Analysis (ICA) techniques have been successfully applied in ERP processing, in the framework of Blind Source Separation (BSS) for unmixing recorded potentials into a sum of temporally independent and spatially fixed components. In the present work ICA was used for reconstructing averaged ERPs in the time window of the P600 component, selecting a subset of independent components' projections to the original electrode recording positions. The selection is based on two empirical criteria, selecting the projection that reconstructs a P600 nearest temporally to the original P600, or selecting the projection combination - up to a preselected maximum number of combined projections providing maximum reconstructed P600 amplitude. The techniques are tested on ERPs recorded from healthy subjects and psychiatric patients, notably improving the differentiation of the two groups, based on either the amplitude or the latency of the reconstructed P600 component, in comparison to results achieved using the original ERPs.