Cerebral perfusion, electrical activity and effects of serotonergic treatment in obsessive-compulsive disorder. A preliminary study.

An abnormally increased glucose metabolism has been described with positron emission tomography (PET) in frontal and caudate regions of obsessive-compulsive patients. Perfusion and electroencephalographic studies have been less conclusive. However, these techniques are, currently, more available than PET and, therefore, deserve further study because of their possible clinical applications. In this article, 13 obsessive-compulsive patients were studied with quantitative EEG and auditory and visual evoked potentials. Six of them were studied also with perfusion single photon emission tomography. A group of 4 patients was studied with both techniques before and after a serotonergic treatment. Increased global, beta, and theta electrical power together with an increased perfusion in frontal regions was observed. The patients also showed a delta power increase over right temporal and frontal regions, together with increased perfusion in the right basal ganglia region as well as a decreased amplitude of the P50 and N100 waves of the auditory evoked potentials over temporal electrodes; these alterations were reduced with treatment. These results are discussed in the context of current data about serotonergic neurotransmission.