The clinical use of quantitative EEG in cognitive disorders

• Main Authors: Paulo Afonso de Medeiros Kanda, Renato Anghinah, Magali Taino Smidth, Jorge Mario Silva
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Associação Neurologia Cognitiva e do Comportamento
• Series: Dementia & Neuropsychologia
• Subjects: quantitative EEG; mental disorder; power spectrum; Coherence; neurodegenerative disorder; brain mapping.
• Online Access: http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1980-57642009000300195&lng=en&tlng=en

Abstract The primary diagnosis of most cognitive disorders is clinically based, but the EEG plays a role in evaluating, classifying and following some of these disorders. There is an ongoing debate over routine use of qEEG. Although many findings regarding the clinical use of quantitative EEG are awaiting validation by independent investigators while confirmatory clinical follow-up studies are also needed, qEEG can be cautiously used by a skilled neurophysiologist in cognitive dysfunctions to improve the analysis of background activity, slow/fast focal activity, subtle asymmetries, spikes and waves, as well as in longitudinal follow-ups.