Somatosensory Cerebral Evoked Responses in Psychotic Depression

In previous studies of somatosensory cerebral evoked responses in psychiatric patients, we found that two characteristics of these responses discriminated between patients with psychotic depressions and healthy or psychoneurotic subjects. The amplitude of the initial negative-positive component was larger and its recovery, as determined by administering paired “conditioning” and “test” stimuli, was retarded (11, 12, 13). Furthermore, after successful therapy, the recovery measure changed in the direction of “normal” (11).