Slow Potentials Evoked by Involuntary and Voluntary Movement, Unconditioned and Conditioned Sensory Stimulation

Publisher Summary This chapter describes a few experiments made in man in which S was asked to carry out a movement after a stimulus or in which a reflex movement was provoked by a specific stimulation. Movement, voluntary or involuntary, evoked as a low cortical wave predominating over the anterior region of the scalp. The characteristics of this wave were very similar irrespective of whether the elicited response was clenching the fist, the ankle reflex, or the pronouncing or thinking of a word. These slow waves can be conditioned. In this case, the anticipatory phenomenon that appeared after S 1 resembled a Contingent Negative Variation. In autistic children, slow waves are large and diffused and their conditioning is evident; they can be evoked by sensory stimulation, and they resemble slow waves recorded in normal newborn infants. In normal children, they are smaller and more localized, and their conditioning is more irregular.