Clinical Neurolog!, and Neurosurger! ELSEVIER
Clinical
Neurology
and Neurosurgery
96 (1994) 205
Book review
Quantitative EEG Anulysis: Clinical Utility und Nebi Methods, by M. Rother and U. Zwiender (editors), 1993, Universititsverlag Jena, Jena, no price stated, ISBN 386007-074-6 It was a good and elegant idea to initiate a congress tradition in honour of Professor Hans Berger (1873-1941), the founder of clinical (human) EEG. After his discovery of the human EEG, Berger waited 5 years before publishing, in 1929, his findings under the title “Ueber das Elektroenkephalogram des Menschen” in the famous Archivftir P.~~llicurieund Nrrvmkrankheiten. From 1930 to 1938 he published a further series of 13 articles under the same title. In fact, he described all EEG changes and/or aspects that we nowadays use in our routine, Fourier analysis included. The topic of the first “Berger Symosium” was the quantitative analysis of EEG. The 71 papers of this symposium are published in this very readable book, subdivided into 6 comprehensive chapters, e.g. on clin-
0303~8467/94/$7.00 0 1994 Elsevier SSIII 0303-8467(94)00004-P
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ical EEG, new approaches of EEG analysis, psychophysiology. evoked potentials, brain mapping and magnetoencephalography. There were no papers on sleep analysis. The authors come from 12 different countries, mostly from the (former) closed areas behind the Iron Curtain. So from an international point of view the meeting was hampered by this small basis. Brand new methods of analysis, e.g. delta plot EEG based on Markov principles, were for this reason, I presume, not presented. I do hope, however, that the next “Berger Symposium” will represent more international contributors, achieving a survey of the immense possibilities on clinical EEG and brain wave analysis. I recommend this book to everybody who is interested in IIEG.
Prof. Dr. H.A.C. Kamphuisen, MD Department of Clinical Neurophysiology University Hospital Leiden Leiden, The Netherlands