Physiologic Artifacts in Neonatal Electroencephalography: The Importance of Technical Comments

.Portable EEG recordings in the neonatal intensive care unit demand both technical proficiency and accurate interpretation. Attention must be directed towards the polygraphic as well as electrographic portion for the proper identification of sleep state as well as abnormal behavior including seizure states. Both physiologic and nonphysiologic artifacts must be rapidly identified since they may interfere with the interpretation of the genuine cerebral activity. Physiologic artifacts are particularly challenging because an accurate technical description can also assist the electroencephalographer in the correlation of neonatal neurological disorders. A variety of physiologic artifacts will be discussed, including facial, head, body, and autonomic types, which illustrate normal as well as abnormal newborn behavior.