Localisation of Auditory Evoked Potentials in man During Awakeness and Sleep

Abstract

Auditory evoked potentials after click, speech and musical stimulation during sleep and awakeness were used in order to determine the existence of a topographical dominance of single cortical areas. The results showed a lateralization in awake subjects dependent on the semantic content of the stimulus. During deep sleep the lateralization of the potential was absent and the activity was extremely symmetrically concentrated around the vertex. The findings support the concept of cerebral domincances which has to be more than a pure metaphorical one.

Key Words:

• Awakeness
• evoked potentials
• lateralization
• music
• sleep
• speech