The quantitative hemispheric EEG in adolescent psychiatric patients with depressive or paranoid symptomatology.

The quantitated EEG of a clinically heterogeneous small group of 13 adolescent psychiatric patients with paranoid or depressive symptoms was compared to that of 26 normal adolescents. While in most controls the variances of the distributions of EEG amplitudes were similar between right and left hemispheres, it was found that higher variances in the right than in the left were significantly more prevalent in patients with depressive symptomatology while it was the reverse in patients with paranoid symptomatology in whom the variances were significantly higher in the left than in the right hemisphere.