ZapLine: a simple and effective method to remove power line artifacts

Abstract

Power line artifacts are the bane of animal and human electrophysiology. A number of methods are available to help attenuate or eliminate them, but each has its own set of drawbacks. In this brief note I present a simple method that combines the advantages of spectral and spatial filtering, while minimizing their downsides. This method is applicable to multichannel data such as electroencephalography (EEG), magnetoencephalography (MEG), or multichannel local field potentials (LFP). I briefly review past methods, pointing out their drawbacks, describe the new method, and evaluate the outcome using synthetic and real data.