Critical Review: The Technique and Application of Electro-Encephalography

THE rate at which scientific knowledge is accumulated depends upon a number of factors the relative importance of which is not the same in the various branches of science. The history of physiology and medicine suggests that their develop-ment is becoming increasingly dependent upon the progress of the physical sciences. This is not merely because the physiologist and clinician prefer to describe their observations in physical and chemical terms; the link is apparent in the first stage of the scientific method, the manner in which the observations are made. The number of new facts discovered with the unaided senses grows smaller; the range of perception is extended by more and more elaborate tools. This growing dependence of the biologist on the physicist is familiar, but it has been emphasized here because it suggests some reasons for the difficulty of integrating the facts collected in the last ten years by many observers of the electrical activity of the human brain.* The use of modern electrical techniques in electro-physiology has made the collection of facts easier and more rapid, but the subjects in which the facts