Comparison of frontal alpha asymmetry among schizophrenia patients, major depressive disorder patients, and healthy cont

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RESEARCH ARTICLE

Open Access

Comparison of frontal alpha asymmetry among schizophrenia patients, major depressive disorder patients, and healthy controls Kuk-In Jang1, Chany Lee1, Sangmin Lee2, Seung Huh2 and Jeong-Ho Chae2*

Abstract Background: Electroencephalography (EEG) frontal alpha asymmetry (FAA) has been observed in several psychiatric disorders. Dominance in left or right frontal alpha activity remains inconsistent in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD), patients with schizophrenia, and healthy controls. This study compared FAA among patients with MDD and schizophrenia, and healthy controls. Methods: We recruited 20 patients with MDD, 18 patients with schizophrenia, and 16 healthy individuals. The EEG alpha frequency ranged from 8 Hz to 12 Hz. FAA was expressed as the difference between absolute power values of right and left hemisphere electrodes in the alpha frequency range (common-log-transformed frontal right- and lefthemisphere electrodes: F4–F3, F8–F7, FP2–FP1, AF4–AF3, F6–F5, and F2–F1). Hamilton depression and anxiety rating scales were evaluated in patients with MDD. Positive and negative syndrome scales were evaluated in patients with schizophrenia. Results: Patients with schizophrenia showed significantly lower left FAA than healthy controls (F4–F3, schizophrenia vs. healthy controls: − 0.10 ± 0.04 vs. -0.05 ± 0.05). There were no significant differences in FAA between patients with schizophrenia and MDD as well as between patients with MDD and healthy controls. Conclusions: The present study suggests that FAA indicates a relatively lower activation of left frontal electrodes in schizophrenia. The left-lateralized FAA could be a neuropathological attribute in patients with schizophrenia, but a lack of sample size and information such as medication and duration of illness might obscure the interpretation and generalization of our findings. Thus, further studies to verify the findings would be warranted. Keywords: Frontal alpha asymmetry, Electroencephalography, Depression, Schizophrenia

* Correspondence: [email protected] 2 Department of Psychiatry, College of Medicine, The Catholic University of Korea, 222 Banpo-daero, Seocho-gu, Seoul 137-701, South Korea Full list of author information is available at the end of the article © The Author(s). 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly fr