Developments in technologic and analytical procedures applied to the study of brain electrical activity have intensified interest in this modality as a means of examining brain function. The impact of these new developments on traditional methods of acquiring and analyzing electroencephalographic activity requires evaluation. Ultimately, the integration of the old with the new must result in an accepted standardized methodology to be used in these investigations. In this paper, basic procedures and recent developments involved in the recording and analysis of brain electrical activity are discussed and recommendations are made, with emphasis on psychophysiological applications of these procedures.

Our results indicated that obese but otherwise healthy children have different regional gray and white matter development in the brain and differences in white matter microstructures compared with healthy normal weight children.

Enuretic children are described as difficult to arouse from sleep. We studied auditory sleep arousal thresholds in enuretic boys and report on the clinical implications of these findings. Fifteen enuretic and 18 control subjects (7-12-year-old males) were studied in a sleep laboratory for four consecutive nights using standard polysomnographic recording techniques. Sleep was undisturbed for the initial two nights and waking thresholds were measured on the following two nights. Enuretic children wet most frequently in the first two-thirds of the night. Arousal attempts were successful 39.7% of the time in controls and only 9.3% of the time in enuretics. In conclusion, enuretic males were more difficult to arouse than age-matched controls. The elevated arousal thresholds may be due to delayed maturation. Treatment programmes that rely on awakening should be aware of these features.