Machine-learning-based classification between post-traumatic stress disorder and major depressive disorder using P300 features

Background: The development of optimal classification criteria for specific mental disorders which share similar symptoms is an important issue for precise diagnosis. We investigated whether P300 features in both sensor-level and source-level could be effectively used to classify post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and major depressive disorder (MDD). Method: EEG signals were recorded from fifty-one PTSD patients, 67 MDD patients, and 39 healthy controls (HCs) while performing an auditory oddball task. Amplitude and latency of P300 were evaluated, and the current source analysis of P300 components was conducted using sLORETA. Finally, we classified two groups using machine-learning methods with both sensor- and source-level features. Moreover, we checked the comorbidity effects using the same approaches (PTSD-mono diagnosis (PTSDm, n = 28) and PTSD-comorbid diagnosis (PTSDc, n = 23)). Results: PTSD showed significantly reduced P300 amplitudes and prolonged latency compared to HCs and MDD. Moreover, PTSD showed significantly reduced source activities, and the source activities were significantly correlated with symptoms of depression and anxiety. Also, the best classification accuracy at each pair was as follows: 80.00% (PTSD-HCs), 67.92% (MDD-HCs), 70.34% (PTSD-MDD), 82.09% (PTSDm-HCs), 71.58% (PTSDm-MDD), 82.56% (PTSDc-HCs), and 76.67% (PTSDc- MDD). Conclusion: Since abnormal P300 reflects pathophysiological characteristics of PTSD, PTSD patients were welldiscriminated from MDD and HCs when using P300 features. Thus, altered P300 characteristics in both sensorand source-level may be useful biomarkers to diagnosis PTSD.