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Differentiation between slow cortical potentials associated with motor and mental acts in man

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Summary

In six human subjects negative slow potentials associated with voluntary movements and discrimination tasks were studied. On the basis of their spatial distribution on the scalp the slow potentials could be divided into three groups:

  1. 1.

    Acentral-dominant potential (‘readiness potential’) which is suggested to be a sign of general readiness to perform a task.

  2. 2.

    Afrontal-dominant potential which seems to be related to the uncertainty of the subject.

  3. 3.

    Acentro-frontal potential (‘contingent negative variation’) which probably results from a summation of the electric fields of the central-dominant and the frontal-dominant potential.

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A preliminary report of this work was presented at the XIII Scandinavian Congress of Physiology, Göteborg 1969 (Järvilehto and Fruhstorfer, 1969).

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Järvilehto, T., Fruhstorfer, H. Differentiation between slow cortical potentials associated with motor and mental acts in man. Exp Brain Res 11, 309–317 (1970). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01474389

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01474389

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