Evaluation of Brainstem Auditory Evoked Responses in Patients With Conversion Disorders

Conversion disorder is characterized by the presence of one or more neurological or general medical symptoms that cannot be explained by a known neurological or medical disorder (1). Several studies have reported that 5 to 15 percent of psychiatric consultations in a general hospital involve patients with conversion disorder diagnosis (2). This disorder frequently occurs in the context of other psychopathology and also tends to have a significant association with CNS disease. According to some researchers, organic CNS dysfunction is a particularly common correlate of conversion disorder (3). Of these, about half had pathology directly or systematically affecting the brain (3). It was suggested that excessive cortical arousal that sets off negative feedback loops between the cerebral cortex and the brainstem reticular formation cause inhibition of the patient’s awareness of bodily sensation (2). The brainstem auditory evoked response (BAER) reflects electrophysiological activity of large numbers of neurons in the brainstem auditory pathway following acoustic stimulation. The various deflections in the response represent neural activity at different levels of the auditory brainstem. Waves I and II are Evaluation of Brainstem Auditory Evoked Responses in Patients With Conversion Disorders