Electroencephalographic response prediction of antipsychotic drug treatment in acutely ill patients and of long-term prophylactic treatment with lithium salts.

The use of the EEG as a pharmacotherapeutic response predictor is still hampered by the largely unsolved problem of extracting the relevant information from the recording in a theory-guided manner and by the likewise largely underestimated fact of pathobiological heterogeneity in diagnostically homogenous groups of patients. Instead of the usual group-statistical designs that rely solely on homogenous psychopathology, we advocate a strategy of single case studies, performed as comprehensive as possible and giving special attention to the baseline condition. It is only a certain number of such single case studies that afford an empirical data base for meaningfully applicating statistical procedures.