SOMATOSENSORY EVOKED POTENTIALS IN HEALTHY SUBJECTS AND IN PATIENTS WITH LESIONS OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM * †

Methods commonly used in animals to record, directly from the surface of the cortex, the potentials which are evoked by sensory stimuli are not satisfactory for investigating evoked responses in man. Dawson ( 1947, 1954) was the first to devise methods which made it possible to see evoked potentials in records from electrodes on the scalp and to adequately describe the human cerebral evoked response. The following paper reports observations on somatosensory evoked potentials in 35 healthy subjects, recorded by Dawson’s methods, as well as results in 56 patients of the National Hospital, Queen Square, London, in whom evoked potentials were investigated during 1958 to 1960. In patients who showed impaired sensation due to lesions affecting peripheral nerves, spinal cord, or brain, the results have been correlated with the modality and the severity of the sensory loss and with the sites of lesions.

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