Effect of defocusing and of distracted attention upon recordings of the visual evoked potential.

Pattern reversal visual stimuli are used to evoke potentials (VEPs) for assessment of visual acuity and for localizing defects along the visual pathways. Our goal was to assess the importance of attention and defocusing to the recordings of pattern VEP. Forty-one volunteers with normal (6/6) corrected visual acuity participated in this study.