Regional variations distinguish auditory from visual evoked potentials in healthy 4 week old piglets

Objective. Evoked potentials (EP), measured using electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings provide an opportunity to monitor cognitive dysfunctions after neurological diseases or traumatic brain injury (TBI). The 4 week old piglet is an established model of paediatric TBI; therefore, healthy piglets were studied to establish feasibility of obtaining responses to auditory and visual stimuli. A secondary aim was to input the EEG data into a piglet computational model to localize the brain sources related to processing. We tested the hypotheses: (1) visual, auditory-standard, and auditory-target stimuli elicit responses, (2) there is an effect of stimulus type, day tested, and electrode region on EPs from EEG, (3) there is an effect of stimulus type, day tested, and brain region on localized sources from a computational model. Approach. Eleven 4 week old female piglets were fitted with a 32-electrode net and presented with a simple white light stimulus and an auditory oddball click train (70 standard; 30 target tones). Main results. N1 and P2 amplitudes were consistently observed for all stimulus types. Significant interaction effects between brain region and stimulus for EP and current density demonstrate that cognitive responses are specific to each modality with auditory localizing to the temporal region and visual to the occipital regions. There was a day effect where larger responses were found on the first day than day 2 and 3 and may be due to the novelty of the stimulus on the first day. Visual stimuli had larger P1 amplitudes and earlier latencies (P1, N1) than auditory which coincides with current density results at 50 ms where larger activations were observed for visual. At 85 ms, auditory had significantly larger current densities coincident with larger and longer N1 amplitudes and latencies than visual. Significance. Auditory and visual processing were successfully and consistently obtained in a porcine model and can be evaluated as a diagnostic assessment for TBI.

Automated summary

This study aimed to investigate the feasibility of obtaining evoked potentials (EP) in healthy piglets in response to auditory and visual stimuli, and to localize the brain sources related to processing using a computational model. The results showed that different stimuli elicited specific cognitive responses, with auditory processing localized in the temporal region and visual processing in the occipital regions. The findings suggest that EPs can serve as a diagnostic assessment for traumatic brain injury (TBI).