The significance of luminance on visual evoked potentials in diagnosis of MS.

In view of the fact that with psychophysical methods monocular luminance changes may increase the detection rate of pathological interocular-latency differences in MS patients, we studied the influence of stimulus luminance on the detection rate of MS using checkerboard visual evoked potentials. Decrements of stimulus luminance covering a range of three log units were unable to increase the detection rate of VEP. Regression coefficients of the luminance-latency functions did not differ in MS patients and normals. Contrary to the hypothesis tested, the diagnostic significance of VEP decreases with decreasing stimulus intensity.