Marked clozapine-induced slowing of EEG background over frontal, central, and parietal scalp areas in schizophrenic patients.

The authors studied how clozapine treatment of patients with chronic schizophrenia affects the scalp topographic distribution of different frequency bands on EEG. Twenty-one patients treated with clozapine, in addition to zero to two typical neuroleptics (13 patients were treated with clozapine as the only neuroleptic), were compared with two control groups: one of healthy subjects and another of patients with schizophrenia receiving one to three typical neuroleptics and no clozapine. Significant differences in the EEG topography were seen between the groups: The theta and delta powers and were increased in the clozapine group compared with the two other groups (P < 0.001). Changes were observed over all electrodes, and were most prominent at the frontal, central, and parietal electrode locations. The nonclozapine-treated group of patients and the healthy control group did not differ significantly from each other. These results suggest that the topographic EEG features caused by clozapine are quite specific to it and can be differentiated from those of other neuroleptics.