The British Journal of Psychiatry 138: 479-484 (1981)
© 1981 The Royal College of Psychiatrists
Some electrophysiological observations in obsessional states
KT Ciesielski, HR Beech and PK Gordon
Averaged evoked potentials were recorded from a group of obsessional
patients and matched normal controls for three types of visual stimulation:
passive monitoring of a light flash, a pattern consisting of gratings and a
cognitive task involving discrimination of two similar shapes. As the
complexity of information processing required by the tasks increased,
differences in the evoked potentials of obsessionals became more marked.
The main finding was of faster latency and reduced amplitude of the N220
component in the cognitive task. The relevance of this finding to a theory
of obsessional disorder is discussed.