Contralateral eye movements and alpha reactivity of lithium patients in recognition tasks.

For the purpose of analyzing memory deficits in patients on lithium therapy the Psychological Labor (E. Opgenoorth et al.) and Lithium Department (R. Wolf et al.) studied not only psychological performance but also biosignals of elementary complexity (characteristic values of eye movements as a reaction to simple light stimuli) and of higher complexity, i.e. those which accompany the cognitive processing of information. Recall and recognition performance for incidentally learned word and picture items was tested in 14 patients receiving lithium treatment. Simultaneously registered EEG (O1-Cz and O2-Cz) and lateral eye movements (LEM) were analyzed with reference to different stimuli. Absolute alpha power and relative event-related desynchronization (ERD) show differences in EEG reactivity between healthy individuals and lithium patients demonstrated by differences in the amplitudes. LEM are characterized by a slight delay of the peaks.