ELECTROENCEPHALOGRAPHIC CLASSIFICATION OF EPILEPTIC PATIENTS AND CONTROL SUBJECTS

Abstract

The clinical application of electroencephalography is complicated by the wide range of individual patterns encountered in the most carefully selected control groups and by the fact that almost all patterns which might be used for diagnosis can be found in the electroencephalograms of symptom-free persons.¹ Nevertheless, a relation has been shown between abnormalities in the electroencephalogram and clinical epilepsy, and specific relationships have been reported between different types of clinical seizures and the electroencephalographic patterns that accompany them. It seemed likely that if the routine electroencephalograms of a large group of epileptic patients were compared with those of a large group of nonepileptic subjects, certain wave forms and frequencies would be encountered so rarely among the nonepileptic subjects and so commonly among epileptic subjects that they could be given diagnostic significance. It was also considered possible that differences might appear between the routine electroencephalograms of patients with contrasting types