Visual attention study in youth with spastic cerebral palsy using the event-related potential method

Youth with mild spastic cerebral palsy (n = 14) and a peer control group were compared on an oddball paradigm. Here, visual stimuli were presented with low and high probability and participants were instructed to count in silence the number of rare stimuli. The infrequent stimulus typically elicits an enhanced frontal central N2 and a centroparietal P300 event-related brain potential, reflecting orientation and evaluation of stimulus novelty. No differences in latency and amplitude of the N2-P300 complex were found between the 2 groups, indicating that some fundamental attention processes are intact in youth with mild spastic cerebral palsy.