Activating Methods in Electroencephalography

Epilepsy is a clinical diagnosis, while a patient with normal EEG who have seizures does not exclude the diagnosis of epilepsy, the consecutive interictal EEGs of many epileptic patients may be found as normal. While it is unlikely that the first routine EEG may detect a typical epileptiform abnormality, the possibility of detecting epileptic abnormality increases due to increases as the recording conditions improve and the number of recordings increase. Activation methods are routinely referred as additional applications to elicit discharge in the EEG. In epileptic patients who are clinically suspected of epilepsy but not show any abnormalities in interictal EEG recordings, epileptic discharges are tried to be provoked by using various activation methods. Activation methods which are frequently used in pediatric EEG laboratory; hyperventilation, fotic stimulation, sleep and sleep deprivation.