Neurodynamic organization of cognitive processes and EEG correlates of endogenous asthenia-like disrorders

RESUMO

The EEG of 58 young endogenous psychiatric patients (male, aged 16 - 25) with atypical subdepressive and depressive states (defined in the literature as "asthenic juvenile deficiency") was analyzed by means of period (interval-amplitude) and factor analyses. Characteristic neurodynamic imbalance was revealed in subgroup of 24 patients of sluggish schizophrenia with prominent "asthenia-like" symptomatology characterized by predominant mild thought disorders with difficulty in attention concentration. These patients diffrend from control normal subjects, cyclothymic patients and the patients of sluggish schizophrenia without well-defined asthenic disorders in significantly higher values of EEG Factor related to the index (temporal percentage), frequency and regularity of low-amplitude beta-waves as well as in the reduced values of the other EEG Factor connected with the mean period of alpha-waves and with the theta-index. According to previous series of EEG study of cognitive activity in norm, this can probably be considered as abundance of processes of "cortical excitation" and deficit of "active selective inhibition". The revealed imbalance of such process proved to be opposed to their normal balance revealed during voluntary attention concentration and some other processes of mental selectivity in normal subjects: