Objective: Endogenous event-related potential (ERP) components have been observed under both attend and non-attend conditions, but it appears that at least some of the attend and non-attend components are functionally and topographically distinct. Also, under active task conditions, motivational and attentional variations may modulate the amplitude of the ERP. These various effects of attention on the ERP can complicate comparisons of the ERPs of normal subjects with the ERPs of clinical subjects, who may have reduced attentional capabilities. The experiment reported here sought to develop a non-task paradigm that reliably produces the same ERP components typically seen under task conditions.Methods: Using rare auditory stimuli that were discrepant from the frequent stimuli both in frequency and intensity, stimuli were presented under non-attend instructions and under instruction to count the rare stimuli. The ERPs in these two conditions were compared with ERPs in a standard oddball paradigm which used stimulus parameters comparable to those of most previous experiments on ERPs in aging. Fifty subjects, ranging in age from 20 to 77, participated.Results: The ERPs to the DISCREPANT oddball stimuli under non-task conditions were similar in scalp distribution to the ERPs to the same stimuli in the ATTEND condition and to the ERPs in the STANDARD/ATTEND condition. Furthermore, there were no significant differences in the age-related increase in ERP latencies among the DISCREPANT/IGNORE, the DISCREPANT/ATTEND, and the STANDARD/ATTEND conditions.Conclusion: The results indicate that increases in ERP latencies with aging can be assessed in the absence of task requirements, and that the paradigm described here may prove useful in investigating cognitive, processing speed in clinical populations. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

The authors studied the relationship between performance on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test and on the Trailmaking-B test and measures of smooth pursuit eye movements in 12 patients with chronic schizophrenia and 12 normal volunteers. They found that performance on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test was significantly correlated with measures of smooth pursuit eye movements in schizophrenic patients but not in normal subjects. Trailmaking-B scores, however, were unrelated to smooth pursuit eye movements in either group.

Researchers studying cognition in mania have assumed that mania is a homogeneous entity. Recent preliminary evidence indicates that some manic syndromes may be preceded by medical, pharmacological, and neurologic antecedents. While DSM-III suggests that mild cognitive impairment may be associated with these manic syndromes, studies to date have not documented this assertion. We compared bipolar patients with antecedent neurologic factors (neurologic manics, NM) to bipolar patients without such histories (primary manics, PM) on standard neuropsychological measures and clinical parameters to ascertain whether cognitive testing could be used as an adjunctive diagnostic tool in defining this subgroup of patients. Results indicated that the NM group was more dysfunctional in intellectual functioning and course of psychiatric illness than the PM group.