Higher individual alpha peak frequency did not predict verbal free recall in 256 RAM SEEG patients

This study tested whether individual alpha peak frequency (IAF) predicts verbal free recall in 256 epilepsy patients with stereo-electroencephalography (SEEG). Archived subject-level spectral values were paired with session-0 recall rates from the same subjects and tasks in RAM free-recall (FR1; n = 184) and categorized free-recall (catFR1; n = 72) datasets. A prewritten, hashed plan specified partial Spearman correlations adjusted for age, sex, site, sampling rate, accepted-pair count, and dataset. IAF did not predict recall (partial rho = -0.087, 95% CI [-0.218, 0.037], permutation p = 0.17); the interval excludes a positive association of rho >= 0.20 in this cohort. Peak frequency, peak height, aperiodic exponent, and relative alpha power also did not predict recall after Holm correction. Older age was associated with lower recall (rho = -0.219, 95% CI [-0.336, -0.090], p = 0.0003), indicating variation in the outcome measure. The findings are limited to between-patient associations in epilepsy patients, based on one 60-second task segment and one session, with variable electrode coverage; they do not test within-person changes in IAF.

individual alpha peak frequency · stereo-electroencephalography · verbal free recall · memory · RAM dataset · partial correlation