About Us

In 2016 we, at the University of Iowa Hospital and Clinic's EEG Laboratory, began hosting an educational forum aimed toward providing continuing educational credits for technologists with registrations in:

• EEG
• CNIM
• CLTM
• PSG
• NCV
• EP

'The making of the University of Iowa's EEG Laboratory'

The University of Iowa’s Electroencephalography and Electroneurodiagnostic Department was founded in the late 1920’s by Professor Lee Edward Travis. Dr. Travis worked in the Psychiatric Hospital with his colleges Dr. John Dorsey and Dr. Yorke Herren; together they started to record what they called “action potentials of the cerebral cortex” based on observations from dogs and cats.

In the 1930’s they started working with a local engineer, Theodore Hunter, to build equipment to record “muscle action potentials.” The first machine built could only record activity above 60-70Hz; so slower spontaneous activity that makes up the EEG could not be seen. They, however, were only interested in the spinal reflex activity at this time.

In 1935, Dr. Travis obtained amplifiers built by engineer Paul Griffith that could record very low frequencies that were characteristic of human EEG. Dr. Travis, Paul Griffith, Dr. Basu, Dr. Kumar Bagchi (a postdoctoral fellow who had previously worked with Travis) and a graduate student, we all should know, John Knott recorded a two-channel human EEG in the laboratory at the University of Iowa making them the forth laboratory in America to record EEG from humans. In 1936, they published their first report. Dr. Travis had many medical and graduate students that grew to become huge influences in the field of EEG including Dr. Herbert Jasper, Donald Lindsley, Charles Henry, and soon after Dr. John Knott.

Between 1936-1938, the University of Iowa laboratory devoted a lot of time to the study of normal EEG, problems related to speech and to psychological processes. Many of these studies were carried out by Dr. Travis’s graduate students. They were now able to record from a four-channel Grass Model II oscillography system that Dr. Travis purchased.

Between 1938-1939, many patients were recorded with the four-channel system due to developing interests between the Psychology and Neurology Departments. Dr. Travis left the University of Iowa in 1938 and moved to the University of Southern California. At this same time, Dr. Knott was awarded his Ph.D. degree in psychology and physiology and was given an appointment as a research associate in the Department of Psychology. The laboratory was awarded $750.00 buy new equipment and on March 6, 1940 the new Clinical EEG laboratories became functional.