Berger lecture. Is Berger's dream coming true?
- Authors
- Gloor, P
- Year
- 1994
- Journal
- Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology
- PMID
- 7512906
- DOI
- 10.1016/0013-4694(94)90143-0
In the last quarter of our century technologies have been developed that permit us to measure and localize with previously unknown precision physiological concomitants of mental activities. Human in vivo cerebral psychophysiology has come of age, decades after the discovery of EEG. In part this has come about through the development of PET and most recently dynamic MRI. However, it is hardly known today that the concepts which underlie these modern methods of studying the physiological correlates of human mental activity were the focus of Berger's early research at the onset of his scientific career at the turn of the century. Indeed at that time he attempted to study human mental function through measuring cerebral blood flow by means of plethysmography applied to patients who had pulsating skull defects. He also measured intracerebral temperature changes during neurosurgical procedures in awake, locally anesthetized, patients in a quest of identifying metabolic concomitants of mental activity. He was thus well ahead of his time, but was forced to give up these methods because they were not commensurate to the task. Only at age 50 he turned to electrophysiology and discovered the EEG. At last he was able to identify some electrophysiological facets of human psychophysiology related to attention, sleep, wakefulness and coma. This essay will illustrate some examples of PET, functional MRI, computerized EEG and cerebral electrical stimulation studies that show that Berger's conceptual approaches to human psychophysiology, even though he could not effectively apply them himself, were correct and have become powerful tools of modern neuroscience.
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In this knowledge base
| Title | Year | PMID |
|---|---|---|
| Advances in Electrophysiological Research. | 2015 | 26259089 |
External
| Title | Authors | Journal | Year | Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alpha rhythm and Alzheimer's disease: Has Hans Berger's dream come true? | Babiloni C et al. | — | 2025 | → |
| Resting state electroencephalographic alpha rhythms are sensitive to Alzheimer's disease mild cognitive impairment progression at a 6-month follow-up. | Babiloni C et al. | — | 2024 | → |
| An appraisal to Hans Berger by the time of his 150th birthday: the human EEG and tales of blood flow, heat and brain waves. | Caeira MW et al. | — | 2023 | → |
| Neurophysiology, Neuropsychology, and Epilepsy, in 2022: Hills We Have Climbed and Hills Ahead. Neurophysiology in epilepsy. | Frauscher B et al. | — | 2023 | → |
| Correlation of EEG spectra, connectivity, and information theoretical biomarkers with psychological states in the epilepsy monitoring unit - A pilot study. | Höller Y et al. | — | 2019 | → |
| Advances in Electrophysiological Research. | Kamarajan C et al. | — | 2015 | → |
| Non-stationarity in the "resting brain's" modular architecture. | Jones DT et al. | — | 2012 | → |
| The functional significance of mu rhythms: translating "seeing" and "hearing" into "doing". | Pineda JA | — | 2005 | → |
| Classification of passive auditory event-related potentials using discriminant analysis and self-organizing feature maps. | Schönweiler R et al. | — | 2000 | → |
| Acute increases in forebrain blood flow during altering responses in conscious rabbits. | Yu YH et al. | — | 1997 | → |
| Alpha rhythms as physiological and abnormal phenomena. | Niedermeyer E | — | 1997 | → |
| Intention as a component of the alpha-rhythm response to mental activity. | Shaw JC | — | 1996 | → |