How to use EEG/ERBP phenomena.

Hitherto the study of cerebral slow waves has been mainly empirical phenomenology, in spite of 50 years of effort to discover their origins and possible functions. Since 1970 the increasing use of both analog and digital filters, combined with more sensitive averaging techniques, has led to better understanding of some possible functional significance for the electroencephalogram (EEG) and the endogenous slow waves of event-related brain potentials (ERBP). The developing concepts and mathematics of non-linear dynamicsand coupled oscillators, when considered in the light of cerebral circuit geometry and topology, of local neuronal circuitry, and of both observed and experienced biological behavior, now offer hope for future, more complete, understanding of the development of 'conscious and goal-directed' activity from robotic and reflexive stimulus-response paradigms. Immediate practical results of a biophysical approach to brain waves should be: Models of vertebrate brains as distributed systems of non-linearly coupled oscillators; and revision of traditional methodologies for recording and interpreting EEG/ERBP data.