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Introduction
Author(s) -
Lawrence R. Velvel
Publication year - 1964
Publication title -
acta neurologica scandinavica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.967
H-Index - 95
eISSN - 1600-0404
pISSN - 0001-6314
DOI - 10.1111/j.1600-0404.1964.tb05392.x
Subject(s) - citation , computer science , information retrieval , library science , world wide web
The reader of electroencephalograms is frequently confronted with a situation in which the EEG examination has yielded a negative or ambiguous result with respect to a given problem. I n some instances valuable diagnostic information may be obtained by resort to one or more of various activation procedures. Intravenous injection of central nervous system stimulants (analeptics) is one such procedure. The two drugs most frequently utilized for this purpose are Metrazol (pentylenetetrazol) and Megimide (p, /I-methyl-ethyl-glutarimide), which have essentially similar effects clinically and electroencephalographically (for references see paper 11, page 1). The use of Megimide in the present study was dictated primarily by the fact that we, a t this laboratory, had gained experience of the drug in connection with EEG examination of various pathologic series. Activation with analeptics has been resorted to notably in the investigation of known and suspected epileptic conditions and the differential diagnosis of disturbances of consciousness, and to a lesser extent in the study of many other pathologic conditions, particularly neurologic and psychiatric disorders, where conventional EEG examination has not been sufficiently informative. Evaluation of EEG responses to activation with analeptics is greatly complicated by the fact that such drugs per se may elicit, in the normal brain, electrical phenomena identical to those occurring spontaneously in epileptic patients. To obviate erroneous conclusions in pathologic and suspectedly pathologic cases, a thorough knowledge of the electroencephalographic effects of analeptics under normal conditions is therefore essential. This notwithstanding, electroencephalographic activation with analeptics has been studied only on a minor scale in normal subjects. Few major investigations have been reported, i.e., those of Baker & Klass (1957), Buchthal & Lennox (1953), Puglsang-Frederiksen (1952) and Moore, Kellaway & Kagawa (1954). All of these workers used Metrazol for activation. Each of their series, however, consisted almost entirely of males, and only that reported by Moore et al. (1954) had a reasonably wide age distribution. Bingle (1958), Margerison (1958) and Rodin, Rutledge & Calhoun (1958), i t is true, have communicated the results