Electroencephalograms of nonepileptic psychotic patients awake and asleep.

Abstract

BECAUSE electroencephalographic studies on epileptics recorded during sleep reveal more significant abnormalities than those recorded in the waking state, 1 it seemed possible that electroencephalographic recordings during sleep on psychotic patients might reveal abnormalities that were nonevident in these patients when awake. However, this hope was somewhat dimmed by the fact that the sleep studies on psychotic patients of Hans Berger 2 and Liberson 3 had failed to reveal significant abnormalities. The latter was able to show differences in the proportion of drowsiness patterns in various types of mental diseases. Diaz-Guerrero, Gottlieb, and Knott 4 compared the entire night sleep records of six manic-depressive patients with six normal subjects but found no electroencephalographic features which might be of diagnostic value. It was not the intention in the present study to continue the analysis of cases of psychomotor epilepsy and seizure discharges from the anterior temporal lobe, for a relation has