The Case of the Disappearing Spindle Burst

Figure 3

The event-related potential (ERP) technique. A raw EEG record is punctuated by the delivery of stimulus events to the subject. The EEG data for each event-related window is then averaged to produce the ERP, which can exhibit several positive (e.g., P1) and negative (e.g., N1) components. Individual ERP components are thought to reflect various aspects of cortical processing. Using this method in adults during REM sleep—with individual twitches as the events while recording from a somatotopically related region of cortex—twitch-related spindle bursts within the activated EEG may be revealed. Figure used with permission of Steven J. Luck.