Hi, everyone,

I'm new here. I have some trouble finding information about the difference between induced and evoked activity, in the field of EEG for instance. I mean a good definition. Here's the best I found :

Some authors have made a distinction between evoked and induced rhythms or activity. Consistent with the definitions and historical introduction in the recent volume on "Induced Rhythms in the Brain" (Baar and Bullock 1992), the distinction recommended is the following. Induced rhythms form the broader category; of which evoked rhythms are a subset. The term induced rhythms was introduced to call attention to a large variety of oscillatory responses that follow either clearly timed stimuli or less sharply timed state changes such as attention, sleep, expectations and seizures. Induced rhythms may be tightly or loosely time- and/or phase-locked to the triggering event and hence may appear in averaged responses or only in single trials. Evoked rhythms are the subset following clearly timed stimuli or events; they may also be more or less tightly time-locked and survive averaging well or poorly. The term evoked is generally not used for responses to less sharply timed state changes or events, such as those just named. It is used for responses that are either rhythmic or, more commonly, episodic such as one or more peaks of different duration. Nonrhythmic, episodic peaks or bumps are not generally called induced except as a common word like elicited or caused. The terms evoked and induced thus overlap. It is wise to add adjectives when some feature is important, such as "phase-locked" or "nonphase-locked," "averaged" or "not averaged," rather than to set up still more jargon by arbitrary distinctions not widely understood.

Anyone familiar wih the topic ?

Regards.[QUOTE][I]

You seem to have found a pretty good definition already!

I have noticed that there are many areas in neuroscience where terms have vague or overlapping meanings, partly because the field is new and evolving rapidly via many parallel efforts. For example, "phasic activity" and "bursting" seem to mean the same thing (temporary high-frequency neural spiking) but different researchers use different terms.

Based solely on the words, "evoked" emphasizes a direct causal relationship (evoked potentials, evoked responses), whereas "induced" emphasizes indirect facilitation of an effect (induced oscillations, induced long-term potentiation).