Assessment of post-cardiac-arrest somatosensory evoked potential in rats

Somatosensory evoked potential (SSEP) reflects the intactness of somatosensory pathways and is commonly used for brain function monitoring during surgeries. Conventional analysis of SSEP usually use sweep averaging, which requires long time recording and may distort the features (amplitudes, latencies) of SSEP components. Here we conducted single-trial SSEP analysis with wavelet denoising, and our results showed that wavelet denoising kept the information of SSEP components unchanged. Our analysis showed the amplitudes and latencies of N1/P1 all decreased compared the baseline level, indicating the neurological injuries in the somatosensory pathways. We hypothesized the neurological injuries in the thalamus may contribute to the decrease in amplitudes and latencies of SSEP components.