Electroencephalogram Steady State Response Sonification Focused on the Spatial and Temporal Properties

Abstract

This paper describes a sonification approach of multichannel electroencephalogram (EEG) steady-state responses (SSR). The main purpose of this study is to investigate the possibility of sonification as an analytic tool for SSR. The proposed sonification approach aims to observe the spatial property (i.e. location of strong brain activities) and temporal property (i.e. synchrony of wave forms across channels) of brain activity. We expect to obtain useful information on brain activity locations and their dynamic transitions by taking advantage of spatial sound with multichannel loudspeakers that represent EEG measurement positions, while expressing the temporal property of multiple EEG channels with timbre by integrating respective auditory streams. Our final sonification evaluation experiment suggests the validity of the proposed approach.