Topography of clonidine-induced electroencephalographic changes evaluated by principal component analysis

Principal component analysis is a multivariate statistical technique to facilitate the evaluation of complex data dimensions. In this study, principle component analysis was used to reduce the large number of variables from multichannel electroencephalographic recordings to a few components describing changes of spatial brain electric activity after intravenous clonidine.

Seven healthy volunteers (age, 26 +/- 3 [SD] yr) were included in a double-blind crossover study with intravenous clonidine (1.5 and 3.0 microg/kg). A spontaneous electroencephalogram was recorded by 26 leads and quantified by standard fast Fourier transformation in the delta, theta, alpha, and beta bands. Principle component analysis derived from a correlation matrix calculated between all electroencephalographic leads (26 x 26 leads) separately within each classic frequency band. The basic application level of principle component analysis resulted in components representing clusters of electrodes positions that were differently affected by clonidine. Subjective criteria of drowsiness and anxiety were rated by visual analog scales.

Topography of clonidine-induced electroencephalographic changes could be attributed to two independent spatial components in each classic frequency band, explaining at least 85% of total variance. The most prominent effects of clonidine were increases in the delta band over centroparietooiccipital areas and decreases in the alpha band over parietooccipital regions. Clonidine administration resulted in subjective drowsiness.

Data from the current study supported the fact that spatial principle component analysis is a useful multivariate statistical procedure to evaluate significant signal changes from multichannel electroencephalographic recordings and to describe the topography of the effects. The clonidine-related changes seen here were most probably results of its sedative effects.