The late somatosensory evoked potential in premature and term infants. I. Principal component topography.

Very little is known about the topographic distribution of the cortical somatosensory evoked potential in premature infants. Principal component analysis (PCA) was applied to the wave forms generated from right median nerve stimuli over a relatively long sweep (483 msec post stimulus) at 16 electrodes in 53 infants with postconceptual ages from 31 to 40 weeks, subdivided into 5 groups by 2 week increments. Factor scores were averaged across subjects, within groups and displayed as topographical maps. Four factors accounted for 71-76% of the variance in each of the 5 groups and the factors extracted from the PCA performed independently in each group were markedly consistent. The first factor (N1/P1) had a left posterior minimum and a left frontal-central maximum and probably represents a tangential dipole located in the post-central gyrus. The second factor (N2) was characterized by a consistent left central minimum with a systematic developmental change in the maximum that seemed to imply that its neural generator was changing in orientation as the infants matured. A third factor (N3) accounted for the most variance and appeared to represent the first evidence of activity in the ipsilateral cortex. Finally, a very late fourth factor appeared only in the more mature groups, with uncertain localization. The topographic maps of the factor scores for these 4 factors appear to account for independent generators in the SEP of the premature and term infant.