Visual/Somatosensory cognitive potentials

Cognitive potentials are electrophysiological responses to internal or external events that are derived from recordings of brain activity made with an electroencephalogram, or EEG. To record EEG, sensors that detect electrical activity are placed on the participant’s scalp and secured with a net, cap, or glue. With millisecond-level resolution, these sensors record the electrical activity that naturally propagates to the scalp from thousands of synchronously firing cortical pyramidal neurons. Cognitive potentials and other measures derived from EEG recordings can thus provide important information about the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying behavioral symptoms of developmental disabilities like autism