Comparison between wireless and wired EEG recordings in a virtual reality lab: Case report

Wireless EEG is a promising tool that can bring neuroscience research closer to the study of perception and cognition in realistic scenarios. Perhaps the most interesting approach is to combine wireless EEG and virtual reality, where one can create and manipulate realistic multimodal environments. However EEG recording during locomotion in a virtual reality lab is exposed to several types of electrical noise generating hardware. In the current paper we present two studies. In the first we turned on and off possible sources of electrical noise. We found that although electrical noise is present in the data, it is typically localized above the frequency ranges of brain related activity. In the second study we measured event related potential changes to a simple visual stimulus using wireless and wired setup in a virtual reality room and in a psychophysiology lab. We found that the shape of the N1, an early component of visual processing is not affected by the type of signal transmission but importantly its latency is different in the two labs.