“A New Roadmap in the Diagnosis and Treatment of Psychiatric Illnesses”

Psychiatrist Prof. Dr. [Name], President of the National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH) In his April 29, 2013 article on the National Institutes of Health (NIH) website, Thomas Insel states that "the Diagnostic Criteria Reference Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM) has little validity and patients with mental health disorders deserve better."

Brain Circuits are Important in the Treatment of Psychiatric Illnesses

The Data Bank objectively advises doctors on the diagnosis of certain psychiatric illnesses:

Quantitative methods analyzing EEG, and especially neurometry, have great clinical success in the following areas:

1. Early diagnosis of many diseases

2. Quantitative assessment of abnormal brain behavior

3. Monitoring changes in the degree of abnormality over time

4. Computer-assisted differential diagnosis of a number of disorders, as well as differentiation between normal and abnormal EEG,

5. Predicting response to treatment and

6. Quantitative prediction of treatment outcomes

QEEG Recording:
The brain's electrical activity is recorded digitally via EEG (QEEG) using a cap containing electrodes placed on the scalp. This recording is done with FDA-approved 128 Hz digital EEG equipment. The electrodes are placed inside the cap using an international 10/20 system. This recording captures electrical activity from the frontal, central, temporal, parietal, and occipital regions of the brain. Four types of electrical activity are produced by our brain, based on their rate per second.

Objective Diagnosis in Psychiatry:

Digital EEG Brain Mapping, useful for objectively diagnosing certain psychiatric illnesses, and its results are objectively evaluated using the NxLINK Data Bank, which is not available at any other center in Turkey. When compared with certain diseases, it provides diagnostic recommendations with 85% to 95% sensitivity and specificity, and the resulting color brain map shows us the problematic areas.

These are used in the differential diagnosis of:

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder,

Generalized Learning Disability,

Depression,

Manic Depression,

Schizophrenia,

Alzheimer's Disease,

Vascular Dementia,

Head Trauma,

Alcohol and Drug Addiction.

Using QEEG measurements, it is possible to differentiate Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) from normal children with 88% specificity and 94% sensitivity, and ADHD from Learning Disabilities with 97% sensitivity and 84.2% specificity (Chabot et al., 2005).

A scientific publication by Aynur Özge, Fevziye Toros, Ülkü Çömelekoğlu, and Hakan Kaleağası from Mersin Faculty of Medicine states that quantitative EEG analysis is a scientific diagnostic method in children with ADHD (Özge et al., 2007).

Many repeated QEEG studies have based the differential diagnostic classification of depression against other diseases on a four-fold discrimination basis (Prichep and John, 1988).

Depression patients can be identified with 73% sensitivity; They used quadruple discriminant to differentiate dementia with 79% specificity and alcoholism with 80% specificity.

In a later report, they used binary discriminant with independent replication to differentiate depression patients with 84% sensitivity and schizophrenia with 85% specificity.

They showed that depression and bipolar disorder were differentiated with 87% sensitivity and 90% specificity (Prichep and John, 1988) using multivariate techniques.

For the first time in the world, Duffy and colleagues made it possible to generate meaningful data from recordings obtained with QEEG. In 1973, Gotman and colleagues developed data that differentiated between normal and abnormal.

 

The American Academy of Neurology and Psychiatry, in a statement published in 1997, stated that QEEG can be used to aid in diagnosis, but that the physician using it must be well-trained and that diagnosis based solely on QEEG data without clinical knowledge is incorrect.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends the use of QEEG for diagnosis.

The American Neuropsychiatric Association's Research Committee report on the use of QEEG in clinical psychiatry declares that QEEG neurometric analysis is a scientifically proven method for diagnosing certain psychiatric disorders, including attention and learning problems in children and mood and mental health disorders in adults. (Coburn K.L, et all, 2006)

The University of North Texas Health Sciences Center states that the QEEG database is used for scientific diagnosis of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and that they utilize it.

https://www.unthsc.edu/newsroom/story/unthsc-offers-latest-adhd-assessment-technology-2/

John ER, Prichep LS, Fridman J, Easton P. (1988).Neur

ometrics: computer-assisted differential diagnosis of brain dysfunctions.Science. Jan 8;239(4836):162-9.)

 

Coburn K.L,, Lauterbach E.C, Boutros N.N, Black K.J, Arciniegas D.B., Coffey C.E.: The Value of Quantitative Electroencephalography in Clinical Psychiatry: A report by the Committee on Research of the American Neuropsychiatric Association. Journal of Neuropsychiatry Clin Neurosci 18:4,Fall 2006

 

Özge A, Toros F, Çömelekoğlu Ü, Kaleağası H. Quantitative EEG Analysis in Children with Attention Deficity/Hyperactivity Disorders. Archives of Neuropsychiatry 2007; 44:19-27.

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Chabot RJ, Serfontin G: Quantitative EEG profiles of children with attention and learning problems.Biol Psychiatry 1996; 40:951-963; Chabot R.J.,PhD., Michele, F. Di, M.D.,Prichep L,PhD : The role of quantitative electroencephalography in child and adolescent psychiatric disorders.Child Adolesc Psychiatric Clin N Am 14(2005) 21-53