[Electroencephalography and normal aging]

Abstract

It is a widely accepted that normal ageing hardly modifies basal rythms: alpha frequency remains occipital, symmetrical, and reactive when eyes are opened. There is probably a frequency decrease, but this is hard to determine individually in the absence of longitudinal studies. In any event, alpha frequency never drops below 9 cycles per second until after 80 years of age. Localized and mostly left-sided temporal abnormalities in normal subjects have been noted several times in the literature. However, these pose the problem of early detection of brain damage in patients with hypertension, heart of pulmonary disease. Therefore, further EEG studies on normal and pathological cerebral ageing should investigate clinically well-defined populations.