title: [Changes in the EEG spectral power during perception of neutral and emotionally salient words in schizophrenic patients, their relatives and healthy individuals from the general population].
abstract: To search for EEG-correlates of emotional processing that might be indicators of genetic predisposition to schizophrenia, changes in EEG spectral power during perception of neutral and emotionally salient words were examined in 36 schizophrenic patients, 50 of their unaffected first-degree relatives, and 47 healthy individuals without any family history of psychoses. In healthy persons, passive listening to neutral words induced minimum changes in cortical rhythmical activity, predominantly in the form of synchronization of slow and fast waves, whereas perception of emotional words was followed by a generalized depression of the alpha and beta1 activity and a locally specific decrease in the power of theta and beta2 frequency bands. The patients and their relatives showed a decrease in the alpha and beta1 activity simultaneously with an increase in the power of delta activity in response to both groups of words. Thus, in the patients and their relatives, reactions to neutral and emotional words were ulterior as a result of augmented reactions to the neutral words. These findings suggest that the EEG changes reflect familial and possibly hereditable abnormal involuntary attention. No prominent decrease in reactivity to emotional stimuli was revealed in schizophrenic families.
authors.forename: M V
authors.initials: MV
authors.lastname: Alfimova
authors.forename: L G
authors.initials: LG
authors.lastname: Uvarova
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D004569:Electroencephalography; D004644:Emotions; D005072:Evoked Potentials, Auditory; D005190:Family / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000235:genetics / Q000503:physiopathology*; D012565:Schizophrenic Psychology; D013067:Speech Perception