Successful and unsuccessful university students: quantitative hemispheric EEG differences

Quantitative measurements of EEG amplitudes were obtained on academically successful and unsuccessful university students during a 5 min, eyes closed, relaxed state. Integrations measured continuously the fully rectified amplitudes of brain waves cumulated over successive epochs of 5 s, regardless of the correlation of a wave to a particular frequency band. The poor academic students, as a group, displayed a significantly higher right/left variance ratio of the cumulated amplitudes at both the temporal and occipital sites than the academically successful group. Upon examining the histograms for these cumulated amplitudes, it was found that the unsuccessful students displayed a greater number of polymodal (non-Gaussian) distributions, particularly in the right hemisphere. These data, which resemble patterns often found in depression, suggest a relative disorganization of right hemispheric activity in the unsuccessful students, and within limits, seems related to the cognitive and/or emotional stability of these students.