What do brain waves check?

The human body is a complex organism, and the nerves inside the organism mainly rely on radio waves to transmit signals. The strongest part of the radio wave signal is in the brain, which is the command center of the human body. The frequency of brain waves is very high and the intensity is high, so they are easy to capture. Using the principles of brain waves to check head health is a relatively advanced method in modern medicine. Let’s take a look at what brain waves check.

EEG is a method of recording brain activity using electrophysiological indicators. When the brain is active, the postsynaptic potentials of a large number of neurons that occur synchronously are summed up to form brain waves. It records the changes in electric waves during brain activity and is the overall reflection of the electrophysiological activity of brain nerve cells on the cerebral cortex or scalp surface.

Functional studies

As an effective tool for indirect measurement of neural activity, electroencephalography (EEG) and its associated event-related potential (ERP) are widely used in neuroscience, cognitive science, cognitive psychology, neuroscience and psychophysiology research. It has high temporal resolution and can detect millisecond-level potential changes, but its spatial resolution is relatively poor. At present, with the help of electroencephalogram (EEG) and event-related potentials, many components related to the cognitive functions of the human brain have been discovered. For example, the P300 component is related to an individual's endogenous attention, and the N400 component is related to semantic processing.

Clinical testing

Brain waves or electroencephalograms are a relatively sensitive objective indicator. They can not only be used in basic theoretical research in brain science, but more importantly, their application in clinical practice is closely related to human life and health.

Brain waves are a necessary basis for diagnosing epilepsy. Brain waves are also of great diagnostic help for various intracranial diseases, such as cerebral stroke, encephalitis, brain tumors, metabolic brain diseases, etc. EEG is still the most objective basis for studying sleep. By monitoring changes in brain waves during sleep, people can distinguish different periods of sleep.

Scientists once cut off the connection between the cerebral cortex and thalamus of animals. The rhythm of brain waves disappeared, but the electrical rhythmic activity of the thalamus remained. If the thalamus is stimulated with 8-13Hz electric pulses, brain waves similar to the alpha rhythm may appear in the cerebral cortex. Therefore, maintaining normal brain waves requires both the cerebrum and thalamus to be intact.