Özet:
Objectives. To investigate in a descriptive manner the P300 component of the event-related potential (ERP),
which is related to aspects of cognitive processing, in patients with premature ejaculation (PE) to determine
whether there is a cognitive alteration in this condition. Recent studies with short latency evoked potentials
such as cortical somatosensory evoked potentials have indicated that afferent sensory inputs from the
genital area to the nervous system are increased in PE. However, the cortical neural process of ejaculation
has remained poorly understood.
Methods. We performed ERPs in 20 patients with PE and in 20 age-matched healthy subjects. ERPs were
evoked by an auditory oddball paradigm consisting of 150 tone bursts (80% 1 kHz; 20% 2 kHz). The
latencies of the N200 and the P300 waves and the amplitude of the P300 wave were measured.
Results. The mean latencies of the N200 and P300 waves were significantly longer in the patients with PE
than in the controls (P 0.04 and 0.03, respectively). No significant difference was found in the P300
amplitude between the controls and patients (P 0.05).
Conclusions. These data indicate that the greater cortical representation of sensory stimuli from the genital
areas that has been shown with somatosensory evoked potential studies might be related to a cognitive/
neurobehavioral dysfunction. The dysfunction involves an increased time to evaluate and categorize the
stimuli in the central nervous system, with no change in the quality of cognition and neural disinhibition by
the prefrontal cortex to early sensory processing in subcortical or primary cortical regions, which are
cognitive neural processes underlying ERP generation.
