TITLE:
Electrocortical Activity Differences Related to Saccadic Movements between Bipolar Patients and Healthy Subjects
AUTHORS:
Washington Adolfo Batista, Juliana Bittencourt, José Inácio Salles, Silmar Teixeira, Luis F. Basile, Antonio Egidio Nardi, Claudia Diniz, Fernanda Novis, Luciana Angélica Silveira, Rafael de Assis da Silva, Amanda de Lima Teixeira, Elie Cheniaux, Flávio Kapczinki, Mauricio Cagy, Roberto Piedade, Bruna Velasques, Pedro Ribeiro
KEYWORDS:
Sensorimotor Integration; Saccadic Movement; Attention; Bipolar Disease and Electroencephalography
JOURNAL NAME:
Neuroscience and Medicine,
Vol.4 No.2,
June
3,
2013
ABSTRACT: Objective: The
present study aimed to investigate and to compare the electrophysiological
changes in bipolar patients and healthy subjects during the execution of a
saccade task. Materials and Methods: The subjects had to respond to a fixed visual stimulus presented by a LEDs bar.
We executed an ANOVA (one-way) and post hoc Scheffé test to examine the
difference of absolute alpha power and reaction time among four groups:
control, depression, manic and euthymic. We observed the frontal, parietal and
occipital regions. The paired t test was realized on each electrode and group
to compare the pre and post moment in the task. Results: We observed a statistical difference among the groups for the behavioral variable—saccade reaction time. For the electrophysiological
variable—absolute
alpha power, we did not find significant difference between the moments (pre
and post stimulus presentation) for none of the electrodes of each bipolar
group. However, the results pointed out to a difference between the moments for
F3, P3, O1 and O2 electrodes for control group. Conclusion: We cannot affirm that the task influences the cortical
activity of the patients. It is possible that the method used to analyze the
data is not the adequate. The time-frequency analysis could be better to
analyze the present data. We also observed that the absolute alpha power could
be considered a marker of bipolar disorder, but not of the different states (i.e., mania, depression, euthymia).