What is the contribution of iEEG as compared to other methods to cognitive neuroscience?

Intracranial electroencephalography (iEEG) enables us to record and modulate macro and micro neuronal responses in both cortical and subcortical regions of the human brain with high spatial and temporal precision, offering significant methodological advantages over other non-invasive imaging and stimulating technologies. Leveraging these technical strengths of iEEG, in combination with sophisticated multivariate analytical approaches, researchers have obtained unprecedented insights into many long-standing problems in cognitive neuroscience. This chapter aims to illustrate these contributions, focusing on human memory. In particular, we describe how iEEG could advance our understanding of (1) the dynamic and transformative nature of short-term and long-term memory representations; (2) the role of hippocampal high-frequency neural activities, especially ripple activities, in memory formation, consolidation, and retrieval; (3) the information coding scheme of single-neuronal activity in the hippocampus and other brain regions; and (4) the common and different neural mechanisms between humans, primates and rodents. Moreover, we briefly discuss how iEEG studies can contribute to developing the state-of-the-art brain-computer interface and closed-loop brain stimulation. We conclude by summarizing the strengths and limitations of the iEEG method and providing practical guidance on how to choose between iEEG and other methods.