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Schizophrenia Bulletin Advance Access published online on March 15, 2007
Schizophrenia Bulletin, doi:10.1093/schbul/sbm016
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© 2007 The Authors
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Application of Electroencephalography to the Study of Cognitive and Brain Functions in Schizophrenia

Odin van der Stelt1,2 and Aysenil Belger3
2 Department of Neurology II, Otto-von-Guericke University, Leipziger Strasse 44, D-39120 Magdeburg, Germany
3 Department of Psychiatry, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC

1 To whom correspondence should be addressed; tel: +49-0391-672-1627, fax: +1-919-966-9172, e-mail: odin.vanderstelt{at}medizin.uni-magdeburg.de.

The electroencephalogram (EEG) recorded from the human scalp is widely used to study cognitive and brain functions in schizophrenia. Current research efforts are primarily devoted to the assessment of event-related potentials (ERPs) and event-related oscillations (EROs), extracted from the ongoing EEG, in patients with schizophrenia and in clinically unaffected individuals who, due to their family history and current mental status, are at high risk for developing schizophrenia. In this article, we discuss the potential usefulness of ERPs and EROs as genetic vulnerability markers, as pathophysiological markers, and as markers of possible ongoing progressive cognitive and cortical deterioration in schizophrenia. Our main purpose is to illustrate that these neurophysiological measures can offer valuable quantitative biological markers of basic pathophysiological mechanisms and cognitive dysfunctions in schizophrenia, yet they may not be specific to current psychiatry's diagnosis and classification. These biological markers can provide unique information on the nature and extent of cognitive and brain dysfunction in schizophrenia. Moreover, they can be utilized to gain deeper theoretical insights into illness etiology and pathophysiology and may lead to improvements in early detection and more effective and targeted treatment of schizophrenia. We conclude by addressing several key methodological, conceptual, and interpretative issues involved in this research field and by suggesting future research directions.

Keywords: human brain electrophysiology / event-related potentials / event-related oscillations / cognition / neuropsychiatric disorders / biological marker


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