Co-chairman's Opening Remarks

Abstract

This chapter presents views on clinical and development aspects of slow potential changes. Replicability is a fundamental tenet of science, and generality of application is essential if any true and useful clinical technique is to be developed. A test that can be verified only in the laboratory that developed it can hardly be a significant contribution to diagnostic medicine. It is known that the Contingent Negative Variation (CNV) appears in the eighth or ninth year. Slow potentials of some types may be demonstrated in younger children, although there is a question as to whether these are the same things seen in the S 1 –S 2 interval in a CNV paradigm. However, in contrast to knowledge of EEG changes in geriatric populations, nothing is known about the appearance of CNVs in old people. In the field of psychiatry, the CNV and other SPs may have been more productive than conventional EEG, although there are questions that require further resolution. Part of this depends upon diagnostic criteria upon which there must be a universal agreement. Studies on behavioral and learning difficulties in children also present researchers with unresolved problems, as the Vancouver studies appear to yield results different from others, at least within the so-called minimal cerebral dysfunction group. Again, however, definitions may differ, and methodology of research design may differ.