Gait-Induced Myoelectric EEG Artifact Removal Validation from Conventional and Tripolar Concentric Ring Electrodes

(1) Background: Understanding neural dynamics during human movement is a core neuroscience objective, yet there are fundamental challenges to the collection of high-fidelity neuroelectric signals during motion. We investigated the effects of electroencephalography (EEG) electrode design for cleaning high-density EEG, using an electrical testbed that mimicked the human head. (2) Methods: We used a 60-channel high-density array of tripolar concentric ring electrodes and conventional disk electrodes to compare the recovery of simulated brainwave activity in the presence of electrical neck muscle artifacts during walking. Simulated brainwave activity consisted of randomly occurring sinusoidal bursts with unique frequency content within human EEG spectral bands (5–37 Hz). Electrical neck muscle activity was recorded from a human subject during walking and broadcast into the head phantom device at scaled surface recording amplitudes (0× 0.5× 0.67×, 1×, 1.5×, 2×). We compared the number and spatial distribution of detected neural sources among electrode channels based on spectral power. (3) Results: At low muscle activation amplitudes, conventional electrodes identified more spectral power peaks (p ≤ 0.01) among more electrodes (p < 0.05) compared to tripolar concentric ring electrodes, indicating poorer spatial selectivity. At greater muscle artifact amplitudes, conventional electrodes identified fewer neural spectral power peaks (p < 0.05) with lesser localization accuracy (p < 0.05) compared to tripolar concentric ring electrodes. (4) Conclusions: We identified improved myoelectric artifact removal from tripolar concentric ring electrode recordings compared to conventional electrodes, offering a promising approach for recovering high-fidelity electrocortical activity from human subjects during locomotion.