New Method for Pharmaco-EEG Research Called MOST-EEG

The term “Pharmaco-EEG” describes the use of electrophysiological brain research methods in pre-clinical and clinical pharmacology research and development.  There is an international society (the International Pharmaco-EEG Society or IPEG) that has provided goals and activities centered around pharmaceutical research using EEG methods.  This society provides numerous guidelines including: standards for human studies, recommendations for standardization of data and signal analysis, how to use quantitative EEG (q-EEG or QEEG) results, and recommendations around sleep research involving pharmaceuticals.

The methods employed by organizations that do pharmaco-EEG research stem from standard EEG analysis methods which consider the EEG as a phenomenology that can be affected by experimental manipulation.  For example, a researcher might measure some feature of the EEG such as the amplitude or power of and EEG wave at a particular scalp electrode in a particular frequency band while participants are in an ‘off-drug’ condition, and then make the same measurement while participants are the ‘on-drug’ condition.  Statistically significant differences found between the off-drug and on-drug conditions, calculated across a group of study participants, would be interpreted to determine the efficacy of the drug.  In this example, the drug had an effect on brain function.

What standard methods generally lack, however, is enough detail about brain function that the research can construct a data-driven model of how the pharmaceutical is affecting particular parts of the brain.  A method that does provide this detail and can be used to evaluate the effects of a pharmaceutical on brain function is called MOST-EEG (Multiple Origin Spatio-Temporal –EEG).  The goal of MOST-EEG is to provide as much description of brain function as possible in an automated analysis procedure.  MOST-EEG has been optimized to identify what areas in the brain area active and how the activations of these areas are coordinated.

More information describing how MOST-EEG can be used in the development of pharmaceuticals is provided in our article titled, “MOST-EEG and Pharmaceutical (1) Development, (2) Re-Purposing, (3) Comparisons: How we help your company with your drug research”.  For information about how MOST-EEG is used in industry to evaluate how pharmaceutical affect the brain, see the Applied Brain and Vision Inc. website.