That’s a wrap…

“We are not makers of history, we are made by history.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

Just some quick fun facts as we wrap up Neurodiagnostics Week:

• 1924 – Calvin Coolidge was elected President, Jimmy Carter was born, the first Macy’s Day Parade was held…and Hans Berger, a German Psychiatrist inserted silver wires under his subject’s scalp (mostly used his children) and invented the EEG recording. He called it an Elektrenkephalogramm and first described the alpha rhythm showing how it suppresses when we open our eyes.

• 1934 – It’s real breakthrough into the clinical world when 2 patients with Absence seizures were studied at Harvard and because their seizures didn’t introduce movement artifact in the recording a clear 3Hz Spike and Wave complex was seen.

• 1937 – the first hospital based EEG lab was started with a 2 channel EEG machine at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

• 1963 – the first EEG registration exam is administered for technicians. There are currently 7501 technologists in the world at the time of this writing that have passed the test. (Lol…my number is 2474 : )

• Although EEG is the most common test in Neurodiagnostics, the field also includes inter-operative monitoring, long-term monitoring, polysomograms, evoked potentials, and nerve conduction studies.

Pretty amazing how this test has evolved and how we can now conduct them in the comfort of patient’s own homes. Remembering how far we have come is inspiring for what is ahead.

Let’s Stay Curious and Grow What We Know