Introductory Remarks to the 1982 IPEG meeting in Hannover

W.M. HERRMANN

The choice of the subject for this symposium, electroencephalography in drug research, can be attributed to two factors. First, there is the increasing importance of the method of electroencephalography in discovering and evaluating the effects of drugs and the risks they involve. Second, the Institute of Drugs of the German Federal Health Office regards one of its tasks to be the co-operation with the scientific community in establishing guidelines for research and encouraging new methods, especially in those areas of drug research in which new developments are occurring rapidly and in which there are no internationally recognized conventions.

H.Berger, who is considered to be the founder of EEG drug research, was a psychiatrist. Since then, electroencephalography has been mainly utilized by psychiatrists, neurologists and neurophysiologists, so that it is understandable that in drug research, electroencephalography was initially concerned almost exclusively with psychotropic drugs and drugs for neurology. We therefore felt that it would be of particular interest if a more detailed account could be given of so-called non-classic psychotropic drugs. Reports will be provided on the EEG effects of lithium, hypnotic drugs, 0-blockers, opiates, endorphines and enkephalines.

In recent years, several new fields of application have been opened up. Among these areas is the evaluation of the toxicity of drugs in the CNS, especially of those drugs that are not in use in neurology or in psychiatry. With the aid of the EEG it is possible to determine whether a particular drug has an effect at the functional level of the EEG at a relatively early stage of the development of drugs. Hopefully, this information will lead to hypotheses for the assessment of risks involved with specific drugs and thus, perhaps, an improvement of drug safety at the place of work and in traffic.

Prof. Schnieders has already drawn attention to the newly recognized importance of the EEG in the evaluation of the bioavailability and bioequivalence of drugs. The EEG also appears to me to be a viable instrument and one which will occupy a permanent place in the evaluation of bioavailability and bioequivalence of substances that affect the functions of the brain.

Progress in the areas of identifying and characterizing drug effects on the CNS has led to hope that substances can be allocated to clinically defined psychotropic classes on the more objective basis of the functional level of the EEG. It is felt that an account of the latest findings and, in particular, a definition of a theoretical position would be of great use. Therefore, W.M. Herrmann's thesis for "Habilitation" at the Free University of Berlin is presented in this book. Another important area of research is the aspect of vigilance. Since M. Matejcek worked extensively on this subject for his doctoral dissertation, this work is also included.

New methods have also been introduced. In the visual evaluation of the past, the qualitative aspects played a particularly important role. Quantitative evaluations were difficult., not much mention is made of them in the literature. Although the quantitative evaluation of the EEG is now firmly established, at the time of the symposium, June 1980, I thought that it would require many years to develop minimum standards for the quantitative and statistical methods of pharmaco-EEG studies, covering the areas of fields of application, planning of experiments, methods of quantitative analysis, and evaluation of the validity of the results obtained from investigations of the effectiveness of specific drugs and the risks they involve. Now, less than two years later, this task has been accomplished; the guidelines worked out by an expert committee are presented in this book. Although these guidelines have the consent of an important group of experts, there is still much work to be done until they are generally accepted and applied,

Over the past ten years electroencephalography in drug research has given rise to a number of expectations, but is has also resulted in some disappointments. I remain convinced that the EEG has a great future in drug research. At the same time, I am equally certain that much still remains to be done before the EEG can take its rightful place. We must propagate and apply the guidelines, train personnel and obtain research funds for method-oriented projects from the public sector as well as from the pharmaceutical industry.

We hope that this book will contribute to fulfilling these tasks by documenting the present state of knowledge, stimulating further fruitful investigations, and suggesting methods and standards which could make results cumulative.

Berlin, June 27, 1980