Abstract
I REGRET that Dr. W. A. Cobb takes exception to my quotation of his article in “Electroencephalography” in support of my statement that the unconsciousness of concussion is associated with a depressed activity of the cerebral cortex as revealed by the electroencephalogram (E.E.G.). The misunderstanding apparently has arisen because Dr. Cobb is considering merely the wave form of the electroencephalogram and I was specifically referring to the “activity in the [cerebral] cortex as revealed by the electroencephalogram”. I must confess that electrophysiologists must accept responsibility for such misunderstanding, because we have given the electroencephalographers very little help in the interpretation of their electroencephalogram records, and they perforce have invented a descriptive nomenclature and empirically related the different types of wave forms to various cerebral disorders. In this context reference may be made to my review on the “Interpretation of Evoked Potentials in the Cerebral Cortex”1. An attempt is there made to show how these potentials may be explained by the known electrical responses of nerve cells. The relevant point for the present discussion is that the electroencephalographers assess activity by simple reference to the electrical wave forms they record, whereas my phrase “activity in the [cerebral] cortex” refers to an assessment of the level of active neuronal responses in the cortex. Admittedly there is much uncertainty in such assessment, but there is good evidence that intense patterned neuronal activity would give a very small and rapid electrical wave-form, whereas large slow potential waves indicate a low level of activity which would be largely attributable to synaptic potentials that are generated in cortical neurones by afferent discharges to the cerebral cortex. A further point is that recording from the scalp, as is usual in clinical electroencephalography, is so inefficient that the small rapid electrical activity is likely to be lost in the general noise background, as presumably occurs in the so-called ‘flat’ electroencephalogram on which Dr. Cobb bases so much of his argument.
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References
E.E.Q. Clin. Neurophys., 3, 449 (1951).
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ECCLES, J. Hypotheses relating to the Brain-Mind Problem. Nature 169, 292 (1952). https://doi.org/10.1038/169292a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/169292a0
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Nature (1952)
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