Gerald Ulrich

Gerald Ulrich (born in 1943) is a retired professor from Charité-University Medicine in Berlin, Germany. He is neurologist and psychiatrist who has conducted extensive clinical and psychophysiological research. He is a highly published author on the subjects of psychiatry, psychiatric electroencephalography, neuropsychology and the epistemic foundations of neurosciences. His writings include several books, overwhelmingly monographs and more than 200 articles published in international journals. In 2007 he was a recipient of the international highly prestigious Dr. Margit Egnér – Prize (Zuerich, Switzerland) “for his efforts of sustained stressing the importance of epistemological fundamentals being the requirement for the continued existence of psychiatry as an autonomous field”.

Dr. Ulrich retired from his professorship in 2008, but he continues to work in lecturing and scientific publishing. Much of his work revolves around the scientific term of “Vigilance”.

It was the English neurologist Henry Head (1923) who several years before the human EEG was discovered coined the purely theoretical and therefore highly ambiguous term of “Vigilance”. This term was based on observations of the fluctuating neuropsychiatric symptoms attributable to brain lesions. Head’s Vigilance does not refer to functions (physiology) nor to performances (psychology). This distinction is of utmost importance because it reminds us to the episteme that psychological phenomena are neither caused by physiological phenomena nor are they reducible to them.

A first glimpse that the theory of Vigilance could open new horizons for neuro-psychiatric research and therapy was the idea of Lairy & Dell who in 1957 assumed that the Spontaneous Resting –EEG (SR-EEG) was an indicator of Cerebral Global Function (CGF) and thus of Vigilance. This idea was taken up and elaborated by my late teacher Dieter Bente and in the following by me.

The dynamics of the SR-EEG may be outlined by 3 predilection types. The predilection types of Dynamic Lability (DL) and Dynamic Rigidity (DR) represent the extreme poles of a continuum with the Physiomorphic Dynamics (PM) in-between.

DL and DR are an infinite deal more associated with pathology than PM. With regard to clinical practice, it first has to be determined whether one is concerned with a state-dependent pathological DL or DR on the one hand or with state-independent non-pathological outlasting DL or DR (in the sense of traits) on the other. In clinical electroencephalography the dynamics of the SR-EEG is exactly the kind of information which is being deleted by Fast Fourier Transform (FFT).

DL and DR are an infinite deal more associated with pathology than PM. One may substantiate that the latter have to be regarded as indicators of functional brain immaturity. It seems reasonable to assume that the type of the EEG-Vigilance dynamics represents a predisposition to certain psychiatric diseases or to personality disorders. Since the proposed approach is dependent on the individually given type of EEG-vigilance dynamics, it is in line with the Law of Initial Value which was formulated by J. Wilder in 1932.

Last but not least, a satisfying test-retest reliability has to be added to the EEG-Vigilance theory. This will not be achieved if according to custom, visual artefact editing is performed. By this means the lawfully time-dependent dynamics of the SR-EEG and therewith the indispensable role of the time-course profile in the characterization of the predilection type of EEG-Vigilance dynamics will inevitably be distorted.

In this respect a hitherto obviously unknown artefact which can not edited visually – to be called Arterial Pulse Impedance Artefact (APIA) – has to be attended. It seems plausible that a great deal of lacking or unsatisfactory test-retest reliability has to be ascribed to distorting of EEG-Vigilance dynamics caused by visual editing and/or overlooking of APIA.