Intracerebral Recordings of the Bereitschaftspotential and Related Potentials in Cortical and Subcortical Structures in Human Subjects

Abstract

More than thirty-five years after its discovery, the Bereitschaftspotential (BP) remains a very productive research tool in both clinical and cognitive neurophysiology. Despite fruitful research results, there are several basic questions about BP that remain unanswered: 1. Where in the brain is BP generated? 2. What is the relation of BP to some other cerebral phenomena that share common features with BP, such as movement preparation and execution (contingent negative variation, CNV), and even changes in power during an identical testing protocol (event related desynchronization and synchronization, ERD/ERS)? 3. What physiological activity is represented by BP?