[Cortical potentials time-locked to EKG-R waves during wakefulness and slow wave sleep (stage 2) in the mankind (author's transl)].

The purpose of this paper was to investigate whether cardiovascular afferent impulses could be recorded on a human scalp as computer-averaged cortical potentials time-locked to EKG-R waves. The results obtained were as follows. 1) Cortical potentials time-locked to EKG-R waves (EKG-EP) could be recorded on scalps of eleven healthy volunteers and within its pattern, triple negative large peaks could be seen during both wakefulness and slow wave sleep (stage 2). 2) Within triple negative large peaks, the 2nd negative peak were most stable and its averaged latencies were 224.1 +/- 32.4 msec. during wakefulness and 257.1 +/- 76.7 msec. during slow wave sleep (stage 2) and the 3rd negative peak had been found more frequently in the slow wave sleep than in the wakefulness. 3) EKG-EPs were analogous with those of auditory evoked potentials time-locked to EKG-R waves (EKG-AEP) if both were recorded in the same concious level. 4) Both latencies of the 2nd negative peak of the EKG-EPs and that of the largest negative peak of the EKG-AEPs were consistent each other with high ratio resulting r = 0.81 (P less than 0.01) in the wakefulness and r = 0.966 (P less than 0.001) in the slow wave sleep (stage 2) respectively.