# Spontaneous EEG Activity in Psychosis

> **NIH VA I01** · VA BOSTON HEALTH CARE SYSTEM · 2020 · —

## Abstract

Psychotic disorders, which include schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, affect ~3% of veterans but impose
higher social and economic costs than other mental illnesses due to their severity. These costs are associated
with not just care of the affected individuals, but also with the effects on their families and society. Therefore,
improved treatment of veterans with psychosis is an important goal. However, there have been no major
advances in treatments for psychosis in decades. Improved understanding of the pathophysiology of psychosis
would advance the search for new treatments and improve the care of veterans with this debilitating condition.
 Electroencephalographic (EEG) studies of SZ and BP have repeatedly demonstrated decreases in
various types of sensory- and task-evoked responses. However, recent evidence has demonstrated that
conversely, SZ is associated with increased spontaneous (non-event locked) brain activity. In the EEG,
increased power of low-frequency activity (LFA; delta [1-4 Hz] and theta [4-8 Hz]) during the resting state has
been observed for many years in SZ and BP, and has recently been corroborated with modern signal
processing methods. New findings suggest that spontaneous gamma activity (SGA) (30–100 Hz) is increased
in SZ during awake sensory stimulation and is associated with psychotic symptoms. In addition, functional
neuroimaging studies have found increased resting state and baseline activity and connectivity. Taking these
findings into account, we hypothesize that SZ and psychotic BP are characterized by increased LFA at
rest, and increased SGA during awake stimulus processing.
 While evoked activity deficits in SZ and BP have been studied for decades, the nature of spontaneous
brain activity in these disorders has been relatively neglected until recently. Since most of the activity of the
brain is spontaneous, not phase-locked to some external event, a better understanding of spontaneous brain
activity in psychosis is needed. Therefore, the overall goal of this project is to elucidate the neural
mechanisms of spontaneous neural activity abnormalities in psychosis with EEG. We will compare SZ
with BP to reveal whether these abnormalities are associated with one or the other disorder, and we will
compare SZ and psychotic BP with non-psychotic BP to elucidate whether these abnormalities are specifically
associated with psychosis. We will use high-density EEG recordings to localize the neural generators of brain
oscillations in veterans with SZ, psychotic BP, non-psychotic BP, and healthy control subjects. Our aims are:
 Aim 1: Are increased SGA and resting LFA present in BP, and are they specific to psychosis?
We will test the hypothesis that increased SGA during auditory steady-state stimulation and increased LFA
during rest are specific to psychosis, and so will be present in SZ and psychotic BP but not non-psychotic BP.
 Aim 2: What cortical regions are associated with increased SGA in psychosis? We hypothesize
th...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9932302
- **Project number:** 5I01CX001443-04
- **Recipient organization:** VA BOSTON HEALTH CARE SYSTEM
- **Principal Investigator:** KEVIN M SPENCER
- **Activity code:** I01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** VA
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** —
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2017-07-01 → 2022-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9932302

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9932302, Spontaneous EEG Activity in Psychosis (5I01CX001443-04). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9932302. Licensed CC0.

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