Evoked Potentials Frontiers of Clinical Neuroscience Vol 3

book are more useful but I am surprised by Yamada et al on bilateral stimulation for the fact that a table is produced showing the SEPs and Blumhardt on the VEP and visual assessment of risk of development of bed field defects, to choose a few at random. sores without any mention being made of There is much of interest in all eight the various clinical assessments of severity sections-perhaps that termed Anatomy has or recovery of stroke. the most to offer for the clinician apart from The photographs in the book are well the obviously clinical sections, with, for produced but the volume cannot be recomexample, M0ller and Jannetta on the BAEP, mended to physicians involved in the care of followed in sequence by Desmedt, Kimura patients with stroke and nor can I see it and colleagues, and Burke and Gandevia on being used by paramedical personnel various SEP aspects. The section entitled because the language used in the text is inapDifferential Diagnosis is generally good and propriately complicated. contains a real gem of a short chapter by DAVID BATES Picton, classifying BAEP abnormalities. Surprisingly the smallest section is that on surgical monitoring, with only two contributors, both on the SEP, and no mention Evoked Potentials Frontiers of Clinical of BAEP monitoring or the more probNeuroscience Vol 3. Edited by Roger Q lematical VEP. Cracco, Ivan Bodis-Wollner. (Pp 564 The arrival of this work is timely since £70-00.) New York: Alan R Liss Inc, 1986. certain aspects of the EP field seem likely to undergo critical reappraisal in the near This book, volume 3 in the series, is of a future. In the USA if not yet in Britain, the different generation and has an aim very rapid increase in availability of magnetic different from the standard works on clinical resonance imaging is bound to be accomevoked potentials, such as Halliday's and panied by a decrease in the use of EPs for Chiappa's volumes, published a few years diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. Event related ago. The authors of this work have potentials, for years a candidate for growth, attempted, largely successfully, to select have still to establish a clinical role, and what is relevant, interesting and important though there has been a remarkable recent in the field, whether basic or clinical. The increase in commercial averagers with facilibook is not intended to be all-encompassing ties for topographical display of EPs, and but a great deal is covered in the 49 chapters, thus for generation of pretty pictures, there by no less than 99 contributors. The great are many who have reservations about the majority of the contributors are from North true value of this technique. This book is America, with Italy and Israel particularly packed with interesting material and is in well represented among the rest. All the congeneral well produced; the price is reasontributors are well known for their work on able. It will be of great value to clinical neuthe aspects of EPs which they here review, rophysiologists wishing to improve their describe or discuss according to their understanding of basic mechanisms, ponpreference. dering new ideas for research or aiming to There are eight sections in the book: improve their routine clinical service. methodology, animal models, anatomy, bioNMF MURRAY chemistry and pharmacology, differential diagnosis, surgical monitoring, paediatrics, and cognitive disorders. Though the reason for placing some contributors in their particular section seems somewhat arbitrary at Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Central times, this arrangement works reasonably Nervous System. Edited by Michael well on the whole. I certainly found, when Brandst-Zawadzki, David Norman. (Pp searching for a particular chapter that my 300; $103.00.) New York: Raven Press, attention was frequently caught by an inter1986. esting or relevant page or illustration in one of the adjacent chapters. As might be expected with a multiauthor Most of the workers whom one would book this one suffers from a certain amount hope to find in a major work on clinical and of repetition. Although aimed at residents basic science of EPs are here and it is both a and practising radiologists there is more pleasure and a great convenience to have in than enough technical detail in the first nine a single volume such diverse workers as chapters, which occupy over one third of the Lehmann on spatial analysis, Kaufmann book, to satisfy any other than someone and Williamson on the neuromagnetic field, who has to devote much of his practise to Maffei and Fiorentini on the pattern ERG, MRI. However, these chapters are well writBook reviews