Elsevier

Biological Psychiatry

Volume 29, Issue 6, 15 March 1991, Pages 585-599
Biological Psychiatry

Auditory event-related potentials and electrodermal activity in medicated and unmedicated schizophrenics

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Abstract

Event-related potentials (ERPs) and electrodermal activity were studied in 14 medicated schizophrenics, 17 unmedicated schizophrenics, and 23 age- and education-matched controls. Subjects were run in three auditory stimulus paradigms differing from the usual ERP paradigms in having interstimulus intervals greater than 12 sec to permit measurement of the longer latency skin conductance response (SCR). It every paradigm medicated but not unmedicated schizophrenics had smaller N120 amplitudes and fewer SCRs than controls. In addition, medicated schizophrenics showed reduced P200 amplitude and latency, longer P320 latency, and reduced skin conductance levels in certain paradigms. These effects cannot easily be attributed to different mental states of medicated and unmedicated patients, since their Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale scores were most the same. It is more probable that antipsychotic and antiparkinsonian drugs reduced electrodermal activity through anticholinergic mechanisms and that the antipsychotic drugs attenuated N120 through other biological mechanisms.

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This investigation was supported by the Department of Veterans Affairs and NIMH grants 30854 and MH 40052.

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We thank Kristin L. McClenahan and Patricia M. White for their help in various aspects of this project. Maya L. Kopell wrote several of the computer analysis programs. Margaret J. Rosenbloom made helful comments on an earlier version of this article.