Background: Anxiety is defined as subjective sense of worry, apprehension, fear and distress. When severe, anxiety disorder can affect a child’s thinking, decision-making ability, learning and concentration. The aim of this study was to analyze the power spectra and spectrum weighted frequency (brain rate) as an indicator of general mental arousal in anxious patients and to compare the results with healthy preadolescents on the same age and gender. Methodology: The diagnosis was made according to two statistical manuals (DMSIV-R and ICD-10), medical history, neuropsychological assessment and QEEG. Results from spectra power for four conditions (eyes closed, eyes open, VCPT and ACPT) were exported to brain rate software. Results and discussion: Calculating factorial ANOVA we found that there was a strong statistical significance, between results of power spectra for all four bands and brain rate for sagittal and lateral topography between control group of healthy subjects vs. the observed anxious group. Conclusions: The results indicated the presence of decreased theta, alpha and beta activity, especially in central and midline regions.The identification of these characteristics in comparison with the HBI database is very simple and easy and has important implications for mean of QEEG in the assessment of children with anxiety. However, until more research is done, these abnormal QEEG patterns, can not be considered as pathognomonic of anxiety disorder.
Key words: anxiety, QEEG, spectrum weighted frequency (brain rate).
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