[Effect of psychosocial risks on the maturation of EEG background activity in early childhood brain-damaged children].

Age-dependent changes in EEG activity were assessed in a comparison of EEG recordings taken from 102 children at the ages of 6 and 10 years. Of the 2-to-13-cycle-a-second activity recorded from the left occipital region, the fast alpha frequencies (10 to 13 cycles a second) showed a significant increase at the expense of all slower frequencies. The children were divided into two groups according to whether they had been exposed to a small or large number of biological risks; in the latter group the extent of the increase in fast alpha activity was negatively related to the number of additional psychosocial risks. This effect was even more pronounced in the group of brain-damaged children, where the smallest age-dependent shift in the EEG frequencies was seen in the group with both minimal brain damage and a high psychosocial risk factor. These data suggest that the exposure of children with minimal brain damage to multiple psychosocial risks may lead to a delay in the maturation of the brain that can be detected by neurophysiological methods.