Relationship between EEG power and rhythm synchronization in health and cognitive pathology.

We report here studies of comparative measures of spectral density and cortical interactions in EEG rhythms in health and schizophrenia. In healthy subjects, all rhythms were symmetrical and synchronous. In "acute" schizophrenia, unlike the situation in health, there was asymmetry (predominantly right-sided) in the distribution of the spectral power of EEG rhythms. In chronic patients, asymmetry was less marked, though the power of most EEG rhythms was significantly lower than in the other two study groups. "Acute" patients showed a lack of interhemisphere interactions for all rhythms apart from the alpha rhythm, while the number of cortical interactions in chronic patients was rather lower than that in the "acute" patients, though there were significantly fewer than in healthy subjects. In addition, the gamma range showed only one interhemisphere association in the posterior areas. These neurophysiological characteristics may underlie a number of the impairments of mental activity in patients with schizophrenia. These data may also indicate that the linkage between power characteristics and synchronization of EEG rhythms is a necessary condition for normal perceptive and cognitive activity and the organization of behavior.