Trigeminal evoked potentials in the cat.

Electrical stimulation of the infraorbital nerve in the cat resulted in a series of far-field evoked potentials at the vertex. The wave form of these potentials is similar to the auditory brain stem evoked response and the somatosensory far-field response; it is multicomponent, the amplitudes of individual components are of the order of 1 microV, and the latencies are all less than 4 msec. The anatomical origins of these evoked potentials were investigated. The results indicated that contributions due to the afferent trigeminal nerve, the principal sensory nucleus, and the spinal trigeminal nucleus are involved.