Word: electroencephalographer
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Dates: during 1939-1939
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Brain Waves. Chief of the Institute's brain-wave station is young, German-born Dr. Paul Frederick Adam Hoefer, who came from Boston with Dr. Putnam. Close kin to a sensitive short-wave radio is the electroencephalograph. Tiny lead electrodes are pasted to the patient's scalp. From the electrodes fine, threadlike wires lead to the machine which detects, through scalp and skull, faint electric brain impulses. A connected drum and ink recorder charts patterns. Normal frequency is ten shallow, rippling, regular waves a second. Abnormal brain waves, often running to 25 a second, show up as irregular...
Remarkably sensitive to aerial noises, the electroencephalograph, while attached to a patient's head, may sometimes pick up short-wave radio programs. Classic is the accident which happened to famed British Neurologist Edgar Douglas Adrian, who once hitched an amplifier to a brain recorder, for a wholesale broadcast of brain waves to an auditorium full of his colleagues. To his horror the electroencephalograph blared out God Save the King. In confusion, half the neurologists rose, half remained seated...