Aberrant Functional Organization in Schizophrenia: Analysis of EEG Coherence during Rest and Photic Stimulation in Drug-Naive Patients

EEG coherence provides a measure of functional correlations between two EEG signals. The present study was conducted to examine intrahemispheric EEG coherence at rest and during photic stimulation (PS) in 18 drug-naive patients with paranoid schizophrenia and 30 control subjects. Compared with the controls, the schizophrenic patients had significantly higher intrahemispheric coherence of the resting EEG for the delta band, although no significant group differences were found for other frequency bands. EEG analysis during PS showed that the patients also had significantly higher EEG coherence over the left posterior regions. In this study, we also examined the changes in intrahemispheric coherence from rest to the stimulus condition (i.e., PS-related coherence reactivity); the patients were found to show significantly smaller changes, with significant group differences being also confined to the posterior regions in the left hemisphere. These findings provide evidence that schizophrenic patients have abnormal EEG coherence in both resting and stimulus conditions and suggest more diffuse, undifferentiated functional organization within hemispheres. In addition, diminished coherence reactivity suggests a failure of PS-related functional reorganization in schizophrenia.