Influence of Age, Gender, Health Status, and Depression on Quantitative EEG

Vol. 52, No. 2, 2005

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Original Paper

Influence of Age, Gender, Health Status, and Depression on Quantitative EEG
Melinda L. Morgan, Elise A. Witte, Ian A. Cook, Andrew F. Leuchter, Michelle Abrams, Barbara Siegman

Behavioral Pharmacology Laboratory, UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute, Quantitative EEG Laboratory, UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute and Hospital, and Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles, Calif., USA

Address of Corresponding Author

Neuropsychobiology 2005;52:71-76 (DOI: 10.1159/000086608)

Key Words

Depression
Quantitative electroencephalography
Neurophysiology
Cordance
Normal aging

Abstract

Quantitative electroencephalography (QEEG) has shown increasing utility in assessing brain function in clinical research studies of depression. QEEG findings may be influenced by a variety of factors other than the presence of depression, including age, gender, depression severity, and physical health status. Many of these factors have not been systematically evaluated. We therefore examined QEEG measures in 104 subjects with depression and normal controls to determine the influence of these factors. We examined QEEG power as well as cordance, a QEEG measure that has a stronger association with cerebral perfusion than conventional QEEG measures. Prefrontal cordance in the theta band has been associated with the pathophysiology of depression and response to treatment. We found that prefrontal cordance and relative power in the theta band were unaffected by age, gender, severity of depression, and health status, while prefrontal absolute power was higher in women than men. All of these measures were different from global measures of absolute and relative power, which were influenced by age, gender, and health status. These findings suggest that prefrontal cordance in depressed patients is not significantly affected by factors of age, gender, severity of depression, or physical illness. Global measures of power, and to a lesser extent prefrontal absolute power, must be interpreted with regard to confounding factors of age, gender, physical illness, and severity of depression.

Author Contacts

Andrew Leuchter, MD
UCLA Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences
760 Westwood Plaza, Room 37-452
Los Angeles, CA 90024 (USA)
Tel. +1 310 825 0207, Fax +1 310 825 7642, E-Mail afl@ucla.edu

Article Information

Published online: June 29, 2005
Number of Print Pages : 6
Number of Figures : 1, Number of Tables : 4, Number of References : 37

Medline Abstract (ID 15990459)

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