Missed Messages: Defining EEG Coherence Patterns Among Psychiatric Patients with Mild Traumatic Brain Injury

Individuals present to outpatient psychiatric clinics for a variety of emotional, behavioral, and cognitive symptoms. Many of these individuals also report a history of head injury unsupported by traditional neuroimaging tools (e.g., CT/MRI). Electroencephalography (EEG) coherence abnormalities are believed to reflect axonal damage following a mild TBI (mTBI). This research evaluated archival electrophysiological and behavioral data of adult psychiatric patients with a history of closed head injury. Patients were subdivided into two groups; a mild TBI group (n=24) and a psychiatric control group (n= 14) based on their qEEG TBI discriminant score (Thatcher et al., 2001). Results indicated that those with mTBI and residual symptoms demonstrated deficits in EEG coherence in the temporal and parietal regions, while the psychiatric control group displayed frontal and temporal coherence deficits. Furthermore, those with mTBI were able to be differentiated from the psychiatric controls based on electrophysiology but not on self-report data.