Clinical neurophysiology : official journal of the International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology
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The assessment of the level of anesthesia is a very hard task, since no gold standard has stood out in the past three decades. Middle Latency Auditory Evoked Potential (MLAEP) is one of the most popular neurophysiological tools for anesthesia monitoring. Recently, Spectral Entropy (SpEn) has been introduced: it provides two different parameters, State Entropy (SE) and Response Entropy (RE). The aim of this prospective study is to check SpEn end-point, comparing it to MLAEPs in neurosurgical anesthesia. ⋯ Our results show that SpEn is able to discriminate between the levels of wakefulness and surgical anesthesia. However, the meaning of data showing a discrepancy between AAI and SpEn is not yet clear and calls for further study.
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Editorial Comment
Event-related potentials predict the outcome of the vegetative state.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Cervical spine manipulation alters sensorimotor integration: a somatosensory evoked potential study.
To study the immediate sensorimotor neurophysiological effects of cervical spine manipulation using somatosensory evoked potentials (SEPs). ⋯ This study suggests that cervical spine manipulation may alter cortical somatosensory processing and sensorimotor integration. These findings may help to elucidate the mechanisms responsible for the effective relief of pain and restoration of functional ability documented following spinal manipulation treatment.
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Activation of the trigeminovascular system and sensitisation of brainstem trigeminal nuclei are thought to play an important role in migraine. The aim of this study was to investigate the blink reflex and its habituation in patients with "chronic migraine". ⋯ The blink reflex and its habituation may help shed light on the subtle neurophysiological changes that occur in migraine patients between and during attacks.
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The development of a novel collision technique for assessment of the activation order of electrically activated nerve fibers, which is an important question in functional electrical therapy or for interpretation of results of motor unit number estimates. ⋯ The excessive fatigue seen with nerve electrical stimulation can be explained by a preferential activation of large diameter nerve fibers. The motor units first activated with electrical stimulation are likely not representative of the motor unit pool in the muscle, which poses limitations in the reliability of some of the proposed methods for motor unit counting.