title: An event-related potentials study on the attention function of posttraumatic stress disorder.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  In order to examine the functional defects and attentional bias in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) patients, event-related potentials (ERP) of attention was investigated.
  
  
  METHODS
  Three groups of emotion pictures, positive, negative (or violent) and neutral, were viewed by 19 PTSD patients and 15 normal controls. Each picture had a frame, and participants reacted to the color of the frame by clicking buttons. Electroencephalogram (EEG) and behavior data were recorded. Peak latencies and amplitudes of P2 were measured.
  
  
  RESULTS
  For the three groups of pictures, PTSD patients had longer reaction time than the controls. Significant difference was found between PTSD patients and controls in response to violent, positive and neutral pictures.
authors.affiliation: Division of Medical Psychology, Chinese People's Liberation Army General Hospital and Medical School Chinese PLA Beijing 100853, China.
authors.forename: Hong
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Cui
authors.affiliation: Division of Medical Psychology, Chinese People's Liberation Army General Hospital and Medical School Chinese PLA Beijing 100853, China.
authors.forename: Xiaohui
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Division of Medical Psychology, Chinese People's Liberation Army General Hospital and Medical School Chinese PLA Beijing 100853, China.
authors.forename: Guoliang
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Division of Medical Psychology, Chinese People's Liberation Army General Hospital and Medical School Chinese PLA Beijing 100853, China.
authors.forename: Moshui
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Shan
authors.affiliation: Division of Medical Psychology, Chinese People's Liberation Army General Hospital and Medical School Chinese PLA Beijing 100853, China.
authors.forename: Yanyan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Jia
keywords: P2; Post-traumatic stress disorder; attention dysfunction; event-related potentials