Abstract
The usefulness of the routine standard (i.e., visually inspected) electroencephalogram (sEEG) in psychiatric practice and research is significantly hampered by the reported prevalence of EEG abnormalities in “normal” adult populations, ranging from 4 % to as high as 57.5 % (Struve 1985). This wide range likely reflects the lack of clear and rigorous standards for choosing subjects for healthy comparison groups. Blanc et al. (1964) documented that the inclusion of psychiatric patients in healthy comparison samples contributes to increased prevalence of EEG abnormalities in the examined sample. This observation was reported as early as 1939 (Davis and Davis 1939) and remains unchallenged today. In order for this technique to be reliable and useful, the boundaries of normality should be well defined.
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Boutros, N.N. (2013). What Constitutes a Normal EEG. In: Standard EEG: A Research Roadmap for Neuropsychiatry. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04444-6_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04444-6_2
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