Electroencephalograms Multiscale Entropy Analysis of Alzheimer's Disease Patients

This paper aims to analyse the electroencephalogram (EEG) background activity of Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients using the multiscale entropy (MSE) method. The MSE has been recently introduced as a measure of the signal complexity that inspects different time scales. EEGs were recorded from 19 scalp electrodes in 8 AD patients and 8 control subjects and the MSE analysis was performed on each artefact-free EEG epoch. The MSE analysis of the data suggests a high degree of complexity and the presence of long time correlations in the EEG. Moreover, we found significant differences (p-value < 0.01, Student's t-test) between the MSE profile of control subjects and AD patients at 7 electrodes (Fp1, Fp2, T5, P3, P4, O1 and O2). We can infer from these findings that the MSE may be a useful tool to inspect the complexity of the EEG and, therefore, increase our knowledge of AD.