Author(s)

Washington Adolfo Batista, Juliana Bittencourt, José Inácio Salles, Silmar Teixeira, Luis F. Basile, Antonio Egidio Nardi, Claudia Diniz, Fernanda Novis, Luciana Angélica Silveira, Rafael de Assis da Silva, Amanda de Lima Teixeira, Elie Cheniaux, Flávio Kapczinki, Mauricio Cagy, Roberto Piedade, Bruna Velasques, Pedro Ribeiro

Anxiety & Depression Laboratory, Institute of Psychiatry of Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (IPUB/UFRJ), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Anxiety & Depression Laboratory, Institute of Psychiatry of Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (IPUB/UFRJ), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil;.
Biomedical Engineering Program, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Brain Mapping and Sensory Motor Integration, Institute of Psychiatry of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (IPUB/UFRJ), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Division of Neurosurgery, University of S?o Paulo Medical School, S?o Paulo, Brazil.
Laboratory of Molecular Psychiatry, Bipolar Disorders Program and INCT Translational Medicine, Hospital de Clínicas de Porto Alegre, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil.
Panic & Respiration Laboratory, Institute of Psychiatry, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
School of Physical Education, Bioscience Department (EEFD/UFRJ), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Objective: The present study aimed to investigate and to compare the electrophysiological changes in bipolar patients and healthy subjects during the execution of a saccade task. Materials and Methods: The subjects had to respond to a fixed visual stimulus presented by a LEDs bar. We executed an ANOVA (one-way) and post hoc Scheffé test to examine the difference of absolute alpha power and reaction time among four groups: control, depression, manic and euthymic. We observed the frontal, parietal and occipital regions. The paired t test was realized on each electrode and group to compare the pre and post moment in the task. Results: We observed a statistical difference among the groups for the behavioral variable—saccade reaction time. For the electrophysiological variable—absolute alpha power, we did not find significant difference between the moments (pre and post stimulus presentation) for none of the electrodes of each bipolar group. However, the results pointed out to a difference between the moments for F3, P3, O1 and O2 electrodes for control group. Conclusion: We cannot affirm that the task influences the cortical activity of the patients. It is possible that the method used to analyze the data is not the adequate. The time-frequency analysis could be better to analyze the present data. We also observed that the absolute alpha power could be considered a marker of bipolar disorder, but not of the different states (i.e., mania, depression, euthymia).

Sensorimotor Integration; Saccadic Movement; Attention; Bipolar Disease and Electroencephalography

W. Batista, J. Bittencourt, J. Salles, S. Teixeira, L. Basile, A. Nardi, C. Diniz, F. Novis, L. Silveira, R. Silva, A. Teixeira, E. Cheniaux, F. Kapczinki, M. Cagy, R. Piedade, B. Velasques and P. Ribeiro, "Electrocortical Activity Differences Related to Saccadic Movements between Bipolar Patients and Healthy Subjects," Neuroscience and Medicine, Vol. 4 No. 2, 2013, pp. 63-70. doi: 10.4236/nm.2013.42010.