What is it about?
Pharmaco-electroencephalography research using neurological data from clinical EEG and qEEG technologies could improve medication selection and treatment planning in psychiatry. Over the past 5 years in a multidisciplinary practice, 386 refractory cases have been found to contain a small number of brainwave abnormalities related to the following diagnostic categories: mood, anxiety, Autism Spectrum Disorder, and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. The brainwave abnormalities were the following: encephalopathy, focal slowing, beta spindles, and transient discharges. However, results found that although these abnormalities were noted in the majority of cases with medication failure they did not align directly with specific diagnoses. These findings suggest that data from the EEG and qEEG can help guide individualized medicine selection and treatment planning, especially when previous medications have failed.
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Why is it important?
We found only 4 neurobiomarkers accounting for all psychiatric medication failure. This is important because understanding why a medications fail gives you data that can assist with medication selection.
Perspectives
We also found that there was only a 6.25% association between the diagnosis a person was given and the neurobiomarker accounting for their symptoms. In psychiatry, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual is used to diagnose based upon reported symptoms, observations, and subjective testing. Dr. Thomas Insel (prior director of the NIMH said that the DSM is not a valid instrument and they estabilished the Research Domain Criteria project (RDoC) to find neurobkomarkers that identifies causes of symptoms. EEG is one of the technologies that is recommended.
Dr Ronald Joseph Swatzyna
The Tarnow Center
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Pharmaco-EEG, Clinical EEG and Neuroscience, November 2014, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/1550059414556120.
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