Cortical evoked potentials and psychopathology. A critical review.

THE ESTABLISHMENT of brainevoked potentials as a valid technique for tapping cerebral responses to specific stimuli has created frenzied attempts to relate it to many areas of research, not always appropriately. Many researchers have been investigating the possibility that the averaged evoked response might elucidate and differentiate mechanisms involved in psychopathology, and as a result, a wealth of evidence has been amassed relating various aspects of psychopathology to the cortical evoked response. In this paper, no attempt has been made to present an exhaustive review of the literature. Our purpose is to give a critical review of selected experiments from the current literature, attempting to integrate and compare them, and emphasizing the need for further controls in experimental design wherever necessary. In 1960 Shagass and Schwartz began to study evoked potentials in psychiatric patients, hoping to provide psychiatrically relevant