ERP experiment in children with developmental coordination disorder as use case for extending EEG/ERP domain ontology

Many children have problems with everyday skills. It can be caused by neurodevelopmental disorder known as developmental coordination disorder (DCD) [1]. DCD is described as a motor skill disorder characterized by a marked impairment in the development of motor coordination abilities that significantly interferes with performance of daily activities and/or academic achievement [2]. Some electrophysiological studies suggest differences between children with motor development problems and controls [3] but without diagnostics of coordination disorder.

Our experimental protocol included a total of 24 children between the ages of 6 to 7 participated on the project as tested subjects. All tested subjects were elicited by three sound stimuli. EEG/ERP activity was recorded using standard tin electrodes placed on a 10-20 EEG cap. The recorded data were further processed and analyzed. To correct deformation of the ERP waveform ICA was applied to averaged data.
Data and metadata were stored in the EEG/ERP Portal [4). The development of the Portal included definition of metadata and construction of ontology for EEG/ERP research. This ontology is currently expressed in several data models: entity relational model, object oriented model and semantic web model. The ontology was originally built using experience from a set of EEG/ERP experiments performed by our research group, expert knowledge from the University Hospital in Pilsen and detailed overview of scientific literature. Last but not least, the domain ontology was modified based on the experience with design of the experimental protocol described above and the forthcoming experiment modification.
References:
[1] Polatajko, H. J. & Cantin, N.: Developmental Coordination Disorder (Dyspraxia): An Overview of the State of the Art. Seminars in Pediatric Neurology, vol. 12, p. 250-258, 2005.
[2] American Psychiatric Association: Category 315.40 Developmental Coordination Disorder. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (ed 4). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association, p. 53-55, 1994
[3] Monastra, V. J., Lubar, J. F., & Linden, M.: The development of quantitative EEG scanning process for ADHD: reliability and validity studies. Neuropsychology, 15. 136-144, 2001.
[4] EEG/ERP Portal, http://eegdatabase.kiv.zcu.cz, retrieved April 20, 2012.

Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic under the grant P407/12/1525.