Discovery
The discovery of PGO waves goes back to 1959, when three French scientists released their scientific article of their study of these waves in animal test subjects. Although at this time, they did not have a specific name for this neurological phenomenon.
It was not until the published work of two American scientists that these waves became known as PGO waves. Their research focused on the propagation of these waves in cats, noticing that these field potentials started in the pons, propagating down to the lateral geniculate nucleus and the occipital lobe.
Other studies with these waves have been done on rats as well. Scientists tried to discern whether the rats had PGO waves, but learned that they are present only in the pons, and wave propagation does not excite any neurons in the lateral geniculate nucleus. As a result of this study, PGO waves are known as P waves in rodents.
PGO waves have been studied mostly through cat and rodent animal models. Despite the focus of the research, PGO waves have been found to exist in other mammalian species including humans and nonhuman primates, such as the macaque and baboon.
Read more about this topic: PGO Waves
Famous quotes containing the word discovery:
“However backwards the world has been in former ages in the discovery of such points as GOD never meant us to know,—we have been more successful in our own days:Mthousands can trace out now the impressions of this divine intercourse in themselves, from the first moment they received it, and with such distinct intelligence of its progress and workings, as to require no evidence of its truth.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“Your discovery of the contradiction caused me the greatest surprise and, I would almost say, consternation, since it has shaken the basis on which I intended to build my arithmetic.... It is all the more serious since, with the loss of my rule V, not only the foundations of my arithmetic, but also the sole possible foundations of arithmetic seem to vanish.”
—Gottlob Frege (1848–1925)
“The new supplants the old. Yet men’s minds are stuffed with outworn bunk. Educating the young in the latest findings of authorities and scholars in the social sciences is important. It is equally important to devise ways and means for aiding the middle-aged and old to reexamine hang-over unscientific doctrines and ideas in the light of recent discovery and research.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)