Digital computer analysis of the human EEG in psychiatric research

Abstract

While the central role of brain function in normal and abnormal behavior is accepted as a basis for psychiatric therapies, difficulties in the definition and measurement of brain function have been a barrier to research. The EEG has frequently been studied, but its definition has depended on visual means alone or on unreliable and unsatisfactory analog devices. The application of digital computer methods to the EEG has provided unusually facile methods of elassification. Four programs of analysis has been studied in two laboratories equipped with conventional EEG amplifiers and IBM-1710 or IBM-1800 digital computer systems. The comparability and some advantages and limitations of period, power spectral density, amplitude and pattern analyses have been studied, with the conclusion that period analysis provides a most efficient analysis model for psychiatric and psychopharmacologic studies in man. These analytic programs have been applied to various problems, including the characterization of the pentothal response, classification of different stages of sleep, the discrimination of threshold doses of centrally active drugs, and the classification of psychoactivity drugs. The usefulness and feasibility of a general purpose digital computer for psychiatric research has been demonstrated and the initial utility programs developed.