Estimation of the dimensionality of sleep-EEG data in schizophrenics.

Deterministic chaos could be regarded as a healthy flexibility of the human brain necessary for correct neuronal operations. Several investigations have demonstrated that in healthy subjects the dimensionality of REM sleep is much higher than that of slow wave sleep (SWS). We investigated the sleep-EEG of schizophrenic patients with methods from nonlinear system theory in order to estimate the dynamic properties of CNS. We hypothesized that schizophrenics would reveal alterations of their dynamic EEG features indicating impaired information processing. In 11 schizophrenic patients, the EEG's dimensionality during sleep stages II and REM was reduced. We suggest that such lower dimensional chaotic processes might be associated with an overloading of neuronal networks during sleep and therefore the psychopathology of schizophrenics might be due to impaired complexity of their EEG's dynamics.