Sixty years of clinical electroencephalography

As a result of painstaking studies carried out over a period of almost 30 years, the German neurologist and psychiatrist Hans Berger, of Jena, published the first paper on the human electroencephalogram (Uber das Elektrenkephalogramm des Menschen') in 1929. Clinical electroencephalography, which reached a zenith in the 1950s and 1960s, increased the range of diagnostic techniques available for a series of brain diseases and revolutionized the study of epilepsy. Today, conventional electroencephalography no longer yields startling scientific discoveries. Nor can it complete with computer tomography and magnetic resonance imaging, in the diagnosis of structural disorders of the brain. In spite of this, the scope of its uses continues to increase and it remains an indispensable instrument of neurophysiological diagnosis, especially in its capacity as a 'seismograph' of the brain. The trend that is apparent throughout the world to cut back clinical electroencephalographic units in favor of other neurophysiological investigative techniques is both unjustified and dangerous. If it continues, it will inevitably lead to a decline in epileptology, which is an essential part of the work of many different medical specialists both in practice and in hospitals.