RESUMO
To interpret the flash evoked potential (FVEP) as dynamic high-order responses to natural and experimental stimulation in healthy preterm infants, waveform analysis of FVEP in 36 healthy preterm infants (postconceptional age 28~42 weeks) were performed using an autoregressive analysis. Based on the histogram of damping frequency of different component impulse response waveforms, the waveforms were divided into 4 groups: group I (0 ~ <2 Hz), group II (2 ~ <6.5 Hz), group III (6.5 ~ <12.0 Hz) and group IV (12~25 Hz). The total power, power of component impulse responses (group I~IV), and damping time (group II~IV) changed significantly with increasing postconceptional age (P<0.01 or P<0.05). Identification of an impulse response component with dominant frequency which undergoes a well-identified change with age is considered to be a useful tool for discriminating between normal and abnormal changes in the FVEP with age in healthy preterm infants.