Clinical and experimental relationships of eeg to psychomotor and personality measures

Abstract

PROBLEMThe major purpose of this paper is to review the literature on EEG associated with psychological functioning as assessed by psychophysical, psychomotor and personality parameters. With the introduction of the EEG procedure in 1929 by Berger(76), expectations were that a tool had been found to correctly diagnose different types of brain disorders. Although the EEG became a useful tool for diagnosing such conditions as brain tumors and epilepsy, it was recognized that much work needed to be done before it would become apparent just how electrical impulses in the brain are related to sensations, thoughts, and affect.During the past two decades investigators have made progress in the pursuit of this problem by studying the brain waves of trained or conditioned animals and have established some definite associations between the wave patterns and conditioned behavior. In addition, identification of sleeping and waking patterns have been accomplished. More recently, a number of studies have attempted to relate EEG readings to psychomotor functioning and personality characteristics.Conditioning. The studies reported here are cited as evidence that alpha blocking response can be conditioned. Most of the early experiments in conditioning were performed on animals. A number of ''-73) have demonstrated that the alert response in the early stage of conditioning is fairly long lasting and involve! most of the brain. As the learning progresses, the response becomes shorter and more focused. This would indicate that the arousal is limited to the portions of the brain needed for a given response. A common, everyday observation supporting this contention is that an individual exerts less conscious effort in performance of a task after the attainment of a new skill.Roland(89) demonstrated that when the auditory cortex of cats was destroyed, EEG indicated that these animals could still discriminate between click and tone stimuli. Conditioning has also been demonstrated in man by Jasper and Shagass(S8), shag as^@^), and M n~k h i n a (~~) . Morrell and Ross' ('*) findings indicated that by successively pairing a sound stimulus with a light stimulus, alpha rhythm could be conditioned to respond to the sound stimulus alone. Photic stimulation was shown to have no significant effect on the formation of the conditioned avoidance response by Milstein and Stevens(@@). To date, conditioning of the alpha response does not appear to be related to any standard psychological tests and investigators have not been successful in relating conditioning to any specific intellectual function or personality characteristic. Reaction time.Reaction time has been used as a successful technique in differentiation between mental abnormality and normal functioning. A review of the literature in this area reveals that as early as 1937 Huston, Shakow and Riggs(S6) and Rodnik and Shakow studied reaction time of schizophrenic patients and demonstrated that their reaction time was generally slower than that of normal Ss. In connection with the EEG Travis(1w...

Patterns of regional brain activity differentiate types of anxiety.

“…Investigative approaches have measured regional brain metabolism (e.g., blood flow, blood oxygenation, glucose metabolism) and the alpha band of the scalp electroencephalograph (EEG), which is considered to be inversely related to activity because power in this frequency band decreases during mental effort (e.g., Davidson, 1988; Shagass, 1972). Early EEG studies reported elevated global brain activity in anxiety (for review, see Walters, 1964; also Bond, James, & Lader, 1974; Lindsley, 1951). However, numerous subsequent studies that used various measures of brain activity have been equivocal (Mantanus, Timset-Berthier, Gerono, & Von Freckell, 1981; Mathew, Weinman, & Claghorn, 1982; Rodriguez et al, 1989; Shagass, Straumanis, & Overton, 1979; Wu et al, 1991; Zohar et al, 1989).…”

Neuropsychological Correlates of the Electroencephalogram in Epileptics: II. The Waking Posterior Rhythm and its Interaction with Epileptiform Activity

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Investigators who have studied electroencephalographic rhythms and abilities have rather strikingly failed to reach a consensus about their interrelationships. Some have concluded that certain EEG rhythm parameters are positively related to abilities (Vogel and Broverman, 1964; Vogel and Broverman, 1966; Tarter, 1972), others have doubted the existence of a general relationship (Lindsley, 1944;Ostow, 1950; Ellingson, 1956; Ellingson, 1966), and one could not come to a firm conclusion (Walters, 1964). Factors undoubtedly contributing t o the confusion include (1) use of subjects from diverse populations ranging from normals to 'the obviously brain damaged and from children t o adults; (2) use of tests which rarely assessed abilities outside the area of "intelligence"; (3) a constricted assessment of EEG rhythms with excessive emphasis upon the alpha rhythm as a primary EEG variable; and (4) differences in EEG recording techniques which make many studies not directly comparable.

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