A portable cortical evoked potential operant conditioning system (C-EPOCS): System development

Abstract

This study presents customizations and evaluations aimed at adapting the Cortical-Evoked Potential Operant Conditioning System (C-EPOCS) into a portable, user-friendly platform for real-time neurofeedback applications. A primary goal was to simplify the component-heavy setup by integrating electroencephalography (EEG) and electromyography (EMG) data acquisition into a single system--while still supporting cortical and muscle response assessment and real-time feedback. One key limitation of portable biosignal acquisition systems is their typically lower sampling rates (e.g., 300-600 Hz) compared to high-resolution systems (e.g., 3200 Hz), which are commonly used for detecting transient responses such as the H-reflex and M-wave. In a C-EPOCS setup, these responses are useful for determining the target stimulation intensity and minimizing inter-session variability in effective afferent excitation. We evaluated whether lower-resolution EMG signals could still support the generation of H-reflex and M-wave recruitment curves for determining target stimulation intensity. Results showed that while EMG sampled at [~]600 Hz and [~]300 Hz produced greater dispersion in recruitment curve data--particularly at 300 Hz--they still yielded comparable estimates for stimulation intensities that elicit Hmax and Mthreshold, the key parameters for C-EPOCS. Additionally, we demonstrate the feasibility of using an automated response delineation algorithm under these conditions. Despite reduced signal clarity, the algorithm reliably identifies M-wave and H-reflex responses in real time. Overall, this study demonstrates the feasibility of a portable C-EPOCS system capable of providing immediate feedback based on both EMG and EEG signals. It also offers practical recommendations for selecting acquisition hardware to support reliable signal quality, real-time processing, and portability.