Role of Electroencephalography in the Diagnosis and Treatment of Neuropsychiatric Border Zone Syndromes.

Abstract

Border zone disorders involve neurological disorders with psychiatric symptoms and signs as well as psychiatric disorders with soft neurological features. This becomes a cause for great diagnostic and therapeutic concerns. We, in this paper, analyzed some of the imitators such as epilepsy, dementia, some forms of encephalitis, and pure psychiatric diseases which produce problems in decision making due to soft neurological features and the utility of electroencephalography (EEG) as a simple diagnostic tool in differentiating some of these conditions from each other as well as the therapeutic role of EEG in some of these disorders. We retrospectively took index cases which produced problems for us in decision making in the last 5 years and correlated with the final diagnosis, EEG parameters as well as literature available by PubMed search using specific key words based on the conditions identified. EEG can be normal in organic diseases and abnormal in psychiatric diseases. Typical EEG findings in neuropsychiatric syndromes point to specific diagnosis. Soft EEG changes are common in psychiatric disorders and do not indicate organicity. EEG can be used to assess efficacy and toxicity of therapeutic agents in psychiatry. Biofeedback-based training to keep the brain in particular rhythm is of use in psychiatric disorders as a pharmaco-sparing agent.