Sections
Electrophysiological Assessment: Introduction | Basic Principles of Clinical Electrophysiology | Clinical Neurophysiological Recording Methods | Electrophysiological Studies of Mild Traumatic Brain
Injury | Key Clinical Points | Recommended Readings | References
Excerpt
Clinical electrophysiology offers a variety of
powerful and informative methods by which to study cerebral function
and dysfunction after traumatic brain injury (TBI). Electroencephalography
(EEG) was the first clinical diagnostic tool to provide evidence
of abnormal brain function caused by TBI (Glaser and Sjaardema 1940; Jasper et al. 1940; Williams 1941).
Such early observations led to the development of increasingly sophisticated
clinical and research electrophysiological techniques, including
quantitative EEG (QEEG), topographic EEG (also known as brain
electrical activity mapping, or BEAM), evoked potentials
(EPs), and event-related potentials (ERPs), magnetoencephalography
(MEG), and magnetic source imaging (MSI). These techniques permit
noninvasive measurement of brain activity with temporal resolution
superior to that of other functional neuroimaging methods, including
positron emission tomography, single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT),
and functional magnetic resonance imaging. However, and as discussed
later in this chapter, the gains in temporal resolution offered
by these techniques are accompanied by relative losses in spatial
resolution (at least when compared with that afforded by functional
neuroimaging).