[Inhibitory control deficit in patients with panic disorder: an event-related potentials study].

OBJECTIVE

To investigate the electrophysiological evidence of inhibitory control deficit in panic disorder patients using a visual simple Go/Nogo task.

METHOD

Sixteen patients with panic disorder and 13 healthy volunteers received a visual simple Go/Nogo task. The stimuli were single or double English letters and appeared with equal probability. The subjects were instructed to press a button as quickly as possible when the double letter was presented (i.e., Go), but make no response to the single letter (i.e., Nogo). 32 channel EEG data were recorded.

RESULT

All subjects displayed a distinct Go/Nogo effect in the N2 component (PD group:F(1,30) = 8.00, P = 0.008; NC group: F(1,24) = 4.60, P = 0.042) and P3 component (PD group: F(1,30) = 7.85, P = 0.009; NC group: F(1,24) = 13.57, P = 0.000) at frontocentral sites, but the amplitudes of Nogo-N2 and Nogo-P3 were significantly reduced in panic disorder patients as compared to the healthy subjects (Fz: F = 9.135, P = 0.005; F = 8.511, P = 0.006, respectively). There was no significant differences between the latencies of Nogo-N2 and Nogo-P3.

CONCLUSION

Panic disorder may consist inhibitory control deficit which may assist in offering new objective evidence to understand the etiology of panic disorder.