It is with deep sadness that we inform about the sudden death of Craig Tenke who passed away on December 19, 2017. Craig was a brilliant neuroscientist devoted to electrophysiology and the scientific method. He will be dearly missed. A memorial fund is his honor has been set up here.

The Psychophysiology Laboratory at New York State Psychiatric Institute (NYSPI) is a recognized leader in the field of cognitive electrophysiology. It has a long history of using event-related brain potentials (ERPs), quantitative electroencephalographic (qEEG), and other electrophysiological measures (e.g., skin conductance) as well as behavioral measures of right-left brain asymmetry to study neurocognitive function in psychopathology. The most widely studied brain potential associated with cognitive function, the P3 component, was discovered by the founder of the laboratory, the late Samuel Sutton. Dense electrode array EEG is measured in a tonic resting state and during cognitive processing (e.g., novelty oddball, recognition/working memory, cognitive control) and emotional processing tasks. Standard EEG measures (e.g., power in delta, theta, alpha & beta bands), ERPs (P1, N1, MMN, N2, P3) to auditory, visual or olfactory stimuli, and time-frequency measures of EEG oscillations (e.g., event-related synchronization and desynchronization) are obtained during these tasks. During studies of patients having schizophrenia, depressive or anxiety disorders, and in children and young adults at risk for depressive or psychotic disorders, as well as in healthy populations, the group has developed an integrated approach to EEG processing. This approach employs advanced techniques for analyzing EEG and ERP data, using principal component analysis of current source density data to provide reference-free measures with improved spatial resolution, which are more closely related to underlying neuronal activity. The developed methods improve the quality of EEG data, eliminate common indeterminacies related to volume conduction, and yield concise and interpretable measures of temporal, spectral, and time-frequency activity, which uniquely and objectively summarize the neuronal generator patterns identifiable from the scalp-recorded EEG. The laboratory has active collaborations with members of other divisions at Psychiatric Institute and in multi-site academic and industry studies.

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