Widening the horizon of neonatal neurophysiology.

In this Editorial we discussed the work by Myers et al. (2012) on spectral analysis of background EEG activity in a large cohort of newborns born either at term or preterm. Their results show that most of the decrease in high frequency activity prior to term-equivalent age is due to a reduction in bursts of rapid oscillations. These results are in accord with previous spectral analyses of transients, leading to postulate a link between GABA neurons and bursting activity until the physiological disappearance of cortical subplate generators is completed. This EEG feature, peculiar to newborn EEG maturation, is then suggested to be a potential marker of GABA involvement in membrane potential generation.