维基百科：脑电图(国外)
http://player.youku.com/player.php/sid/XNDgyNjQzODI4==.html来自维基百科的医学基础知识视频讲座。Electroencephalography (EEG) is the recording of electrical activity along the scalp. EEG measures voltage fluctuations resulting from ionic current flows within the neurons of the brain. In clinical contexts, EEG refers to the recording of the brain's spontaneous electrical activity over a short period of time, usually 20–40 minutes, as recorded from multiple electrodes placed on the scalp. Diagnostic applications generally focus on the spectral content of EEG, that is, the type of neural oscillations that can be observed in EEG signals. In neurology, the main diagnostic application of EEG is in the case of epilepsy, as epileptic activity can create clear abnormalities on a standard EEG study. A secondary clinical use of EEG is in the diagnosis of coma, encephalopathies, and brain death. A third clinical use of EEG is for studies of sleep and sleep disorders where recordings are typically done for one full night, sometimes more. EEG used to be a first-line method for the diagnosis of tumors, stroke and other focal brain disorders, but this use has decreased with the advent of anatomical imaging techniques with high (<1 mm) spatial resolution such as MRI and CT. Despite limited spatial resolution, EEG continues to be a valuable tool for research and diagnosis, especially when millisecond-range temporal resolution (not possible with CT or MRI) is required.
Derivatives of the EEG technique include evoked potentials (EP), which involves averaging the EEG activity time-locked to the presentation of a stimulus of some sort (visual, somatosensory, or auditory). Event-related potentials (ERPs) refer to averaged EEG responses that are time-locked to more complex processing of stimuli; this technique is used in cognitive science, cognitive psychology, and psychophysiological research.
Source of EEG activityThe brain's electrical charge is maintained by billions of neurons. Neurons are electrically charged (or "polarized") by membrane transport proteins that pump ions across their membranes. Neurons are constantly exchanging ions with the extracellular milieu, for example to maintain resting potential and to propagate action potentials. Ions of similar charge repel each other, and when many ions are pushed out of many neurons at the same time, they can push their neighbours, who push their neighbours, and so on, in a wave. This process is known as volume conduction. When the wave of ions reaches the electrodes on the scalp, they can push or pull electrons on the metal on the electrodes. Since metal conducts the push and pull of electrons easily, the difference in push or pull voltages between any two electrodes can be measured by a voltmeter. Recording these voltages over time gives us the EEG.
The electric potential generated by single neuron is far too small to be picked up by EEG or MEG. EEG activity therefore always reflects the summation of the synchronous activity of thousands or millions of neurons that have similar spatial orientation. If the cells do not have similar spatial orientation, their ions do not line up and create waves to be detected. Pyramidal neurons of the cortex are thought to produce the most EEG signal because they are well-aligned and fire together. Because voltage fields fall off with the square of distance, activity from deep sources is more difficult to detect than currents near the skull.
Scalp EEG activity shows oscillations at a variety of frequencies. Several of these oscillations have characteristic frequency ranges, spatial distributions and are associated with different states of brain functioning (e.g., waking and the various sleep stages). These oscillations represent synchronized activity over a network of neurons. The neuronal networks underlying some of these oscillations are understood (e.g., the thalamocortical resonance underlying sleep spindles), while many others are not (e.g., the system that generates the posterior basic rhythm). Research that measures both EEG and neuron spiking finds the relationship between the two is complex with the power of surface EEG in only two bands (gamma and delta) relating to neuron spike activity.
Clinical useA routine clinical EEG recording typically lasts 20–30 minutes (plus preparation time) and usually involves recording from scalp electrodes. Routine EEG is typically used in the following clinical circumstances:
to distinguish epileptic seizures from other types of spells, such as psychogenic non-epileptic seizures, syncope (fainting), sub-cortical movement disorders and migraine variants.
to differentiate "organic" encephalopathy or delirium from primary psychiatric syndromes such as catatonia
to serve as an adjunct test of brain death
to prognosticate, in certain instances, in patients with coma
to determine whether to wean anti-epileptic medications
At times, a routine EEG is not sufficient, particularly when it is necessary to record a patient while he/she is having a seizure. In this case, the patient may be admitted to the hospital for days or even weeks, while EEG is constantly being recorded (along with time-synchronized video and audio recording). A recording of an actual seizure (i.e., an ictal recording, rather than an inter-ictal recording of a possibly epileptic patient at some period between seizures) can give significantly better information about whether or not a spell is an epileptic seizure and the focus in the brain from which the seizure activity emanates.
Epilepsy monitoring is typically done:
to distinguish epileptic seizures from other types of spells, such as psychogenic non-epileptic seizures, syncope (fainting), sub-cortical movement disorders and migraine variants.
to characterize seizures for the purposes of treatment
to localize the region of brain from which a seizure originates for work-up of possible seizure surgery
Additionally, EEG may be used to monitor certain procedures:
to monitor the depth of anesthesia
as an indirect indicator of cerebral perfusion in carotid endarterectomy
to monitor amobarbital effect during the Wada test
EEG can also be used in intensive care units for brain function monitoring:
to monitor for non-convulsive seizures/non-convulsive status epilepticus
to monitor the effect of sedative/anesthesia in patients in medically induced coma (for treatment of refractory seizures or increased intracranial pressure)
to monitor for secondary brain damage in conditions such as subarachnoid hemorrhage (currently a research method)
If a patient with epilepsy is being considered for resective surgery, it is often necessary to localize the focus (source) of the epileptic brain activity with a resolution greater than what is provided by scalp EEG. This is because the cerebrospinal fluid, skull and scalp smear the electrical potentials recorded by scalp EEG. In these cases, neurosurgeons typically implant strips and grids of electrodes (or penetrating depth electrodes) under the dura mater, through either a craniotomy or a burr hole. The recording of these signals is referred to as electrocorticography (ECoG), subdural EEG (sdEEG) or intracranial EEG (icEEG)--all terms for the same thing. The signal recorded from ECoG is on a different scale of activity than the brain activity recorded from scalp EEG. Low voltage, high frequency components that cannot be seen easily (or at all) in scalp EEG can be seen clearly in ECoG. Further, smaller electrodes (which cover a smaller parcel of brain surface) allow even lower voltage, faster components of brain activity to be seen. Some clinical sites record from penetrating microelectrodes.
Research useEEG, and the related study of ERPs are used extensively in neuroscience, cognitive science, cognitive psychology, and psychophysiological research. Many EEG techniques used in research are not standardized sufficiently for clinical use.
Relative advantages
The first human EEG recording obtained by Hans Berger in 1924. The upper tracing is EEG, and the lower is a 10 Hz timing signal.Several other methods to study brain function exist, including functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), positron emission tomography, magnetoencephalography, Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, Electrocorticography, and Single-photon emission computed tomography. Despite the relatively poor spatial sensitivity of EEG, it possesses multiple advantages over these techniques:
Hardware costs are significantly lower than those of all other techniques
EEG sensors can be used in more places than fMRI, SPECT, PET, MRS, or MEG, as these techniques require bulky and immobile equipment. For example, MEG requires equipment consisting of liquid helium-cooled detectors that can be used only in magnetically shielded rooms, altogether costing upwards of several million dollars; and fMRI requires the use of a 1-ton magnet in, again, a shielded room.
EEG has very high temporal resolution, on the order of milliseconds rather than seconds. EEG is commonly recorded at sampling rates between 250 and 2000 Hz in clinical and research settings, but modern EEG data collection systems are capable of recording at sampling rates above 20,000 Hz if desired. MEG is the only other noninvasive cognitive neuroscience technique that approaches this level of temporal resolution.
EEG is relatively tolerant of subject movement, unlike all other neuroimaging techniques. There even exist methods for minimizing, and even eliminating movement artefacts in EEG data
EEG is silent, which allows for better study of the responses to auditory stimuli
EEG does not aggravate claustrophobia, unlike fMRI, PET, MRS, SPECT, and sometimes MEG
EEG does not involve exposure to high-intensity (>1 Tesla) magnetic fields, as in some of the other techniques, especially MRI and MRS. These can cause a variety of undesirable issues with the data, and also prohibit use of these techniques with participants that have metal implants in their body, such as metal-containing pacemakers
EEG does not involve exposure to radioligands, unlike positron emission tomography.
ERP studies can be conducted with relatively simple paradigms, compared with IE block-design fMRI studies
Extremely uninvasive, unlike Electrocorticography, which actually requires electrodes to be placed on the surface of the brain.
EEG also has some characteristics that compare favorably with behavioral testing:
EEG can detect covert processing (i.e., processing that does not require a response)
EEG can be used in subjects who are incapable of making a motor response
Some ERP components can be detected even when the subject is not attending to the stimuli
Unlike other means of studying reaction time, ERPs can elucidate stages of processing (rather than just the final end result)
Relative disadvantagesLow spatial resolution on the scalp. fMRI, for example, can directly display areas of the brain that are active, while EEG requires intense interpretation just to hypothesize what areas are activated by a particular response.
EEG determines neural activity that occurs below the upper layers of the brain (the cortex) poorly.
Unlike PET and MRS, cannot identify specific locations in the brain at which various neurotransmitters, drugs, etc. can be found.
Often takes a long time to connect a subject to EEG, as it requires precise placement of dozens of electrodes around the head and the use of various gels, saline solutions, and/or pastes to keep them in place. While the length of time differs dependent on the specific EEG device used, as a general rule it takes considerably less time to prepare a subject for MEG, fMRI, MRS, and SPECT.
Signal-to-noise ratio is poor, so sophisticated data analysis and relatively large numbers of subjects are needed to extract useful information from EEG
Combining EEG with other neuroimaging techniquesSimultaneous EEG recordings and fMRI scans have been obtained successfully, though successful simultaneous recording requires that several technical difficulties be overcome, such as the presence of ballistocardiographic artifact, MRI pulse artifact and the induction of electrical currents in EEG wires that move within the strong magnetic fields of the MRI. While challenging, these have been successfully overcome in a number of studies.
Similarly, simultaneous recordings with MEG and EEG have also been conducted, which has several advantages over using either technique alone:
EEG requires accurate information about certain aspects of the skull that can only be estimated, such as skull radius, and conductivities of various skull locations. MEG does not have this issue, and a simultaneous analysis allows this to be corrected for.
MEG and EEG both detect activity below the surface of the cortex very poorly, and like EEG, the level of error increases with the depth below the surface of the cortex one attempts to examine. However, the errors are very different between the techniques, and combining them thus allows for correction of some of this noise.
MEG has access to virtually no sources of brain activity below a few centimetres under the cortex. EEG, on the other hand, can receive signals from greater depth, albeit with a high degree of noise. Combining the two makes it easier to determine what in the EEG signal comes from the surface (since MEG is very accurate in examining signals from the surface of the brain), and what comes from deeper in the brain, thus allowing for analysis of deeper brain signals than either EEG or MEG on its own.
EEG has also been combined with positron emission tomography. This provides the advantage of allowing researchers to see what EEG signals are associated with different drug actions in the brain.
更多介绍请看：http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroencephalography 楼主你真是好人呀，向你致敬。
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