Pharmaco-electroencephalography: the value of quantified EEG in psychopharmacology

One of the first routine applications of quantitative EEG analysis was in the field of human psychopharmacology. As early as the 1960's, quantitative techniques, mainly period and amplitude integration analyses or analogue filtering, were successfully applied to EEG data with the aim of quantifying and objectifying changes induced by psychoactive medidation. Thus, step by step, a new research field, pharmacoelectroencephalography, was developed. Many other sophisticated new techniques have been described in great detail from the engineering viewpoint. However, due to the language barriers common between representatives of the various disciplines involved, it is still difficult to view them in context with the experimental design as a whole. Therefore, based on examples taken from our routine work, an attempt is made to give a balanced judgement on the value of such techniques in pharmaco-electroencephalography, and their contribution to the CNS pharmacology.