Clinically Useful Applications of Evoked Potentials in Adult Neurology

SUMMARYRecent advances in the field of sensory evoked potentials (EPs) have allowed assessment of function in regions of the nervous system that were previously inaccessible to noninvasive electrophysiologic study. Pattern visual and brainstem auditory EPs, respectively, are more sensitive to certain optic nerve or posterior fossa lesions than either clinical or laboratory tests. Short-latency somatosensory EPs from the upper and lower extermities are sensitive to pathollogy at cervicomedullary and thoracolumbar levels of the neuraxis as well as to suprasegmental lesions. This article reviews the development of these as clinically useful tools and the applications in which they have contributed most to the practice of adult neurology.