In alcoholism, Cristini and colleagues (2003) found that the P300 amplitudes to targets in an auditory oddball paradigm as well as in a CNV paradigm were significantly higher among patients who relapsed during the 3-month follow-up than in those who remained abstinent. Saletu-Zyhlarz and colleagues (2004) compared EEG profiles of relapsing patients with those of abstaining patients during 6 months of pharmacologically supported relapse prevention therapy. Aberrant brain function, characterized by a decrease in delta and slow alpha power and an increase in beta power, was more pronounced in relapsing than in abstaining patients. Further, after 6 months of treatment, only the abstaining patients showed an increase in slow activity, a decrease in fast alpha, an acceleration of the delta/theta centroid, and a deceleration of the alpha centroid, reflecting a normalization of brain function. These findings suggest that EEG measures may serve as useful prognostic indicators in alcoholism. However, notwithstanding the proven and potential applications, electrophysiological tools are often thought to have not yet been optimized as standardized outcome measures for their use in clinical trials (Cho et al. 2005).
