[Eeglablist] Alpha asymmetry spectral analysis

[Ross Ávila]

Hi everyone,

I am a graduate student working on an alpha asymmetry study and I am
struggling with the spectral analysis.

I have collected 8 minutes of resting EEG divided into 8 60-second
blocks.  Upon loading the data into EEGLAB, it recognizes a single
8-minute long epoch.  I'm just confused about what I need to do at
this point, and there is no one at the University of South Florida
that researches alpha asymmetry (they all do ERP studies here).  I
have little to no experience in MATLAB (part of what appealed to me
about the EEGLAB interface), so any help in the form of coding might
need to be "dumbed" down and pretty basic.

I am struggling specifically with the following questions:
1) Do I need to extract epochs? If so, how?
2) How do I actually get the alpha asymmetry?  I've read about using
FFT, but don't know how to actually do this.  Also read about
"windowing" but again do not understand exactly what this means.

Any help would be immensely appreciated.

Thank you,
Ross

-- 
Ross T. Ávila
Cognitive Neuropsychology Lab
Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology
University of South Florida