Comparison of Wiener filtering and selective averaging of evoked potentials.

The application of the Wiener filter to the estimation of evoked potentials is criticized, and this method is compared with an a posteriori selective averaging method. It is shown that Wiener filtering may cause information loss for certain types of evoked potentials, since the transient evoked response components of the brain are of damped oscillatory character and are not stationary signals. The selective averaging method is briefly described and suggested to obtain consistent, dependable and more descriptive averaged evoked potentials (AEPs) of a brain structure for well-defined waking and sleep stages. The stated arguments are supported by a comparative representation of AEPs obtained from the cat inferior colliculus by means of Wiener filtering and selective averaging.