
eeg abnormalities in early childhood schizophrenia:
a double-blind study of psychiatrically distrubed
and normal children during promazine sedation
eeg tracings during promazine sedation
were obtained on 58 children who had
autistic or symbiotic childhood psychosis.
for comparison eeg's were done under
identical conditions on 4 other groups of
children: 44 with chronic undifferentiated
schizophrenia; 37 non-psychotic children
with severe, acting-out behavior disorders;
10 with neuroses; and 13 psychiatrically
normal children.  final clinical diagnoses
were made without knowledge of the eeg
readings as determined for this study, and
the eeg's were all placed in random order
and read without any knowledge of the
clinical diagnosis.  eeg abnormalities ac-
cepted were focal slowing, focal spikes,
paroxysmal spikes and waves, and par-
oxysmal spikes and waves with independent
spikes.
among the 149 patients 51% had abnormal
records.  none of the psychiatrically normal
children had eeg abnormalities.  except
for the neurotics, the eeg abnormalities
were qualitatively and quantitatively sim-
ilar in the psychiatric patients.  the
most frequent abnormalities were ir-
regular paroxysmal spike and wave com-
plexes, often best seen during the
transition from wake to sleep.  of the 149
patients, 33% had this complex, either alone
or with independent spikes.  although these
complexes were most frequent in the au-
tistic-symbiotic group, the incidence was
not statistically significantly different from
the higher performing, chronic undiffer-
entiated schizophrenics who had communi-
cative speech or the non-psychotic children
with acting-out behavior disorders.
of the 58 autistic-symbiotic children, 19%
had seizures, which is similar to the 13%
seizure incidence in the remaining 91 psy-
chiatric patients.
whether the cerebral dysfunction im-
plied by this study is a primary disorder
or is secondary to some factor such as the
effect of prolonged anxiety on body chem-
istry cannot be decided at this time.  never-
theless, an organic concomitant has been
demonstrated in 51% of the psychiatrically
disturbed children.  by increasing the
amount of time included in the eeg sam-
ple, the incidence of electrical abnormalities
might be even higher.
