Psychophysiological evidence for cerebral laterality effects in a high-risk sample of students with subsyndromal bipolar depressive disorder.

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.