Am J Psychiatry 1986; 143:602-607
Copyright © 1986 by American Psychiatric Association
Psychophysiological evidence for cerebral laterality effects in a high- risk sample of students with subsyndromal bipolar depressive disorder
RE Lenhart and ES Katkin
The authors compared bilateral recordings of electrodermal activity and
conjugate lateral eye movements in two groups (10 men and 10 women each) of
college students: high-risk nonpatients with subsyndromal depression and
normal control subjects. Like acutely depressed patients, the high-risk
subjects showed smaller right- than left-hand skin conductance response
amplitudes to neutral tones. This group also showed a bias toward
left-tending conjugate lateral eye movements in response to various
cognitive problems. Control subjects showed symmetrical responses on all
electrodermal activity measures and question-specific conjugate lateral eye
movements. These data are tentatively interpreted as reflecting
right-hemisphere hyperexcitability in affective illness.
