Left hemispheric overactivation in schizophrenia: relationship to clockwise circling.

Schizophrenic patients, nonschizophrenic patients, and nonpsychiatric controls were compared in their demonstration of clockwise circling (CC), and in lateral eye movement responses to verbal and spatial questions. Only schizophrenic subjects who did not evidence CC showed inappropriate left hemisphere arousal to spatial stimuli. A tendency was noted for CC to occur more frequently among paranoid than nonparanoid schizophrenics. The results, taken together with other recent findings, suggest that the absence of CC may correlate with a more severe form of schizophrenia, and one more likely to be characterized by overarousal of the left cerebral hemisphere.