Statistical aspects of neurophysiologic topography

The multitude of electrodes and the large number of EEG variables used in neurophysiologic topography call for new inferential statistical concepts in the analysis of data from corresponding studies. These concepts must take into consideration that significance levels and confidence coefficients lose their numerical meaning in situations with many significance tests and/or interval estimates performed on the data from one sample of subjects or patients. The application of one of these concepts. Descriptive Data Analysis (DDA), is discussed, using the data from a real EEG mapping example. Also, the use of DDA is proposed for the judgement of normality of EEG maps.