The human EEG remains more desynchronized in the waking state than the cat EEG, and observable bursts would now be considered anomalous. We now understand that this is not a contradiction. And whereas there was in fact an increase in sleep spindles with training in epileptic subjects, the various studies which were intended to replicate Sterman's findings did not yield consistent EEG changes in the waking state (Kaplan, 1975). The human EEG does not exhibit such bursts except during Stage 2 sleep.
The cat EEG had manifested a countable increase in incidence of bursts of SMR rhythmic activity with training. The Sterman protocol was replicated for seizures in a number of laboratories and by a number of groups (See References for Table 1.) The technique failed to be acknowledged at the time, however, because of confounding issues regarding anticipated changes in the EEG (Quy, 1979). Subsequently, however, a controlled study was successfully accomplished with primarily temporal lobe or complex-partial seizures (Lantz, 1988). Since training was done at the sensorimotor strip, and was deemed to address the motor system specifically, Sterman argued initially that the training could be expected to be beneficial only for seizures with a predominantly motor symptomatology. This historical circumstance introduces a bias into how matters are viewed, since in fact there are many types of seizure that respond quite readily to EEG training. Epilepsy is listed among the most difficult conditions to address with EEG training because of the variety with which epilepsy manifests, because of the ongoing structural deficits which may underlie the condition, and also because historically it has been the most intractable cases which have been referred for EEG training.
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