A 13-month-old child developed hypsa-rhythmia-infantile spasms after nearly drowning. Serial EEG, multimodality evoked potential, and CT scan of the brain revealed hypsa-rhythmia, disruption of ascending and descending tracts rostral to the mesencephalon, and a fairly severe degree of dilation of the ventricular system and subarachnoid space. We speculate that deafferentiation of the cerebral cortex is critical in the genesis of the hypsarhythmic pattern.
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