Evaluation of Brain Activity in Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder Using Standardized Low Resolution Electromagnetic Tomographic Analyses (sLORETA)

This study evaluated Default Mode Network (DMN) brain activity in females with Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD)/Dysphoric PMS and asymptomatic controls using archival quantitative electroencephalography (qEEG) and standardized low-resolution brain electromagnetic tomography (sLORETA) data. Eyes-closed resting-state EEG analyses were examined across follicular and luteal menstrual cycle phases. The analytic sample included 157 participants: PMDD/Dysphoric PMS (n = 87) and asymptomatic controls (n = 70). Nonparametric Wilcoxon Signed Rank Tests were used for follicular-to-luteal within-group comparisons, and Mood's Median Test was used for luteal-phase between-group analyses. Asymptomatic controls showed significant follicular-to-luteal mean-Z changes in cingulate gyrus delta, cingulate gyrus theta, and insula theta. PMDD/Dysphoric PMS participants showed a significant percentage-of-aberrant-voxels change in angular gyrus beta2. During the luteal phase, PMDD/Dysphoric PMS participants showed significantly higher subcallosal-gyrus beta2 mean-Z activity than asymptomatic controls. Luteal subcallosal-gyrus beta2 abnormal-voxel values were descriptively higher in PMDD/Dysphoric PMS participants (19.43%) than in asymptomatic controls (4.13%); however, this voxel-percentage comparison is reported descriptively because luteal-phase between-group percentage-of-voxels analyses did not reach the study threshold for statistical significance. These findings support further investigation of DMN-linked neural activity, subcallosal-gyrus beta2 activity, and phase-related network adaptability in PMDD.