Iranian Journal of Biomedical Engineering (IJBME)
نشریه علمی مهندسی پزشکی زیستی

Investigating intrinsic neural timescales of EEG in patients with PTSD using autocorrelation window

Articles in Press

Document Type : Full Research Paper

Authors

Hosein Amirkhani 1
Samira Abbasi 2
Behrooz Olfatian Gillan 3

1 Biomedical Engineering Department, Hamedan University of Technology, Hamedan, Iran

2 Biomedical Engineering Department, Hamedan University of Technology, Hamedan, Iran.

3 , Faculty of Basic and Applied sciences, Kermanshah University of Technology, Kermanshah, Iran

10.22041/ijbme.2026.2089446.2036
Abstract
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a psychological disorder resulting from direct or indirect exposure to severe stressful and traumatic events. Among the various methods for investigating brain activity, electroencephalography (EEG) has emerged as an important non-invasive approach for examining brain electrical activity, particularly in the context of PTSD. In recent years, analysis of EEG signals using the Autocorrelation Window (ACW) has gained attention for examining the intrinsic neural timescales of brain activity. In this study, two metrics, ACW-0 and ACW-50, were extracted and analyzed to evaluate the intrinsic neural timescales of the brain activity in healthy individuals and patients with PTSD. In addition, the mean values of these indices were computed for each channel, and between-group differences were examined on a channel-by-channel basis. The results showed that although no significant difference was observed in the overall mean ACW-0 between the two groups, ACW-50 was significantly reduced in individuals with PTSD compared to healthy individuals and exhibited a large effect size. In the channel-by-channel analysis, some channels showed differences between the two groups in the initial analysis; however, after applying the Benjamini–Hochberg correction for multiple comparisons, none of these channel-wise differences remained significant at the q < 0.05 level. These findings suggest that ACW-50 may be considered a promising feature for investigating alterations in the timescale of brain activity associated with PTSD.

Keywords

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
EEG
Timescale
Autocorrelation Function
Subjects
Iranian Journal of Biomedical Engineering (IJBME)

Articles in Press, Accepted Manuscript
Available Online from 08 October 2026

  • Receive Date 25 May 2026
  • Revise Date 16 September 2026
  • Accept Date 07 October 2026

Home

Contact Us