How Electroencephalogram Reference Influences the Movement Readiness Potential

Readiness potential (RP) based on electroencephalograms (EEG) has been studied extensively in recent years, but no studies have investigated the influence of the reference electrodeon RP. In order to investigate the referenceeffect, 10 subjects were recruited and the original vertex reference(Cz) was used to record the raw EEG signal when the subjects performed a motor preparation task. The EEG was then transformed to the common average reference(CAR) and reference electrodestandardization technique (REST) reference, and we analyzed the RP waveform and voltage topographiesand calculated the classification accuracy of idle and RP EEG segments. Our results showed that the RP waveform and voltage topographieswere greatly influenced by the reference, but the classification accuracy was less affected if proper channels were selected as features. Since the Cz channel is near the primary motor cortex, where the source of RP is located, using the REST and CAR referencesis recommended to get accurate RP waveforms and voltage topographies.