Effects of parenteral administration of haloperidol and chlorpromazine in man. I. Normal subjects: quantitative EEG and subjective response

Empirical mode decomposition based detrended sample entropy in electroencephalography for Alzheimer's disease

Quantitative electroencephalographs (qEEG) provide a potential method to objectively quantify the cortical activations in Alzheimer's disease (AD), but they are too insensitive to probe the alteration of EEG in the early AD. The sample entropy (SaEn) attempts to quantify the complex information embedded in EEG non-linearly, which fits in that EEG originates from non-linear interactions. However, a technical issue which has been ignored by most researchers is that the signal should be stationary. In order to resolve the non-stationarity of SaEn in EEG to improve the sensitivity, an empirical mode decomposition (EMD) was applied for detrending in this study. Twenty-seven AD patients (9M/18F; mean age 74.0±1.5 years) were included. Their initial Minimal Mental Status Examination was 19.3±0.7. They received the first resting-awake 30-mine EEG before the therapy. Five of them received a follow-up examination within 6 months after the therapy. The 30-s EEG data without artifacts were selected and analyzed with a new proposed method, "EMD-based detrended-SaEn" to attenuate the influence of intrinsic non-stationarity. The correlation factors in 27 AD patients showed a moderate correlation (0.361-0.523, p<0.05) between MMSE and EMD-based detrended SaEn in Fp1, Fp2, F4 and T3. There was a high correlation (Correlation coefficient=0.975, p<0.05) between the changes of MMSE and the changes of EMD-based detrended-SaEn in F7 in 5 follow-up patients. The dynamic complexity of EEG fluctuations is degraded by pathological degeneration, and EMD-based detrended SaEn provides an objective, non-invasive and non-expensive tool for evaluating and following AD patients.

The effects of haloperidol on the EEG spectrum

A placebo-controlled study with six normal volunteers was carried out using 1 mg haloperidol IM. In some EEG frequency bands, the power density due to haloperidol appeared to increase or decrease depending on the subject. Nevertheless, if the results of the six subjects are taken together, the effects of haloperidol are in agreement with the literature. No correlation was found between plasma concentration of haloperidol and EEG response. Some methodological problems are discussed.

Selective neuroendocrine effects of low-dose haloperidol in normal adult men

The neuroendocrine effects of haloperidol, usually reported as side effects of this drug when given in antipsychotic doses, have not been systematically investigated. In the present study five normal adult men were administered saline and two doses of of haloperidol (0.25 mg, 0.5 mg) intramuscularly in a double-blind randomized block design. The anterior pituitary hormones GH, LH, FSH, and PRL were measured in blood samples taken every 20 min for several hours thereafter. The low doses of haloperidol used have been shown by others to alter the human EEG; in our subjects these doses produced no objective or subjective clinical effects. There were no drug related changes in GH, LH, or FSH. PRL, however, showed a prompt, statistically significant, dose-related increase in plasma levels, with a return to baseline with 5 h. Haloperidol has strong dopamine-blocking effects, and the hypothalamic inhibitory mechanism for PRL release is believed to be dopamine-mediated. The results of this study suggest that haloperidol may have utility in low doses primarily for its hypothalamic neuroendocrine effects, and that dose-related PRL release may be a useful paradigm for comparing dopamine-blocking antipsychotic agents in humans.