Influence of attention alternation on movement-related cortical potentials in healthy individuals and stroke patients

Objective In this study, we analyzed the influence of artificially imposed attention variations using the auditory oddball paradigm on the cortical activity associated to motor preparation/execution. Methods EEG signals from Cz and its surrounding channels were recorded during three sets of ankle dorsiflexion movements. Each set was interspersed with either a complex or a simple auditory oddball task for healthy participants and a complex auditory oddball task for stroke patients. Results The amplitude of the movement-related cortical potentials (MRCPs) decreased with the complex oddball paradigm, while MRCP variability increased. Both oddball paradigms increased the detection latency significantly (p < 0.05) and the complex paradigm decreased the true positive rate (TPR) (p = 0.04). In patients, the negativity of the MRCP decreased while pre-phase variability increased, and the detection latency and accuracy deteriorated with attention diversion. Conclusion Attention diversion has a significant influence on MRCP features and detection parameters, although these changes were counteracted by the application of the laplacian method. Significance Brain–computer interfaces for neuromodulation that use the MRCP as the control signal are robust to changes in attention. However, attention must be monitored since it plays a key role in plasticity induction. Here we demonstrate that this can be achieved using the single channel Cz.