ENCEPHALOGRAPHIC STUDIES IN MANICDEPRESSIVE PSYCHOSIS: REPORT OF THIRTY-EIGHT CASES

With controversy rampant among the various schools of psychiatric thought concerning the possible etiologic factors in the psychoses, from the point of view of functional versus organic change, we have endeavored to demonstrate, through the medium of encephalography, the organic, structural deviations from the normal in the brains of psychotic persons. In a previous communication,1in which encephalographic studies of sixty schizophrenic patients were reported, the conclusions indicated that definite organic changes existed, as manifested by the failure of any encephalographic study to reveal a normal cerebral pattern. Ebaugh, Dixon, Kiene and Allen, Ginzberg and Hermann and Herrnheiser showed marked changes in cerebral architecture in their encephalographic studies in dementia paralytica. Jacobi and Winkler indicated structural abnormalities in encephalograms of schizophrenic patients. Thus far, no series of cases of manic-depressive psychosis, studied from the encephalographic standpoint, has come to our attention in the literature. MATERIAL AND METHOD The present