Electroencephalographic studies following electric shock therapy; observations on fifty-one patients treated with unidirectional current.

ELECTROENCEPHALOGRAPHIC studies following electric shock treatment have been described by several authors (Levy, Serota and Grinker 1 ; Hughes, Wigton and Jardon 2 ; Pacella and Barrera 3 ; Fleming, Golla and Walter, 4 and Bagchi, Howell and Schmale 5 ). It is fairly well agreed by all these authors that electroencephalographic tracings after electric shock treatment show a definite resemblance to epileptiform wave patterns (Kalinowsky and Hoch 6 ). All these brain waves tracings were obtained after administration of alternating current. The only previous observation on unidirectional, fluctuating current as administered by the Reiter apparatus (Friedman and Wilcox 7 ; Friedman 8 ) was reported by Proctor and Goodwin. 9 They found a significant increase in the occurrence of cortical slow wave formations in the subjects receiving alternating current as compared with the subjects receving unidirectional, fluctuating curent. We have tried to elaborate on their observations in this study, utilizing only unidirectional, fluctuating current. Since most