• Pharmaco-EEG
• Sleep-EEG

Ace Therapeutics offers an electroencephalogram (EEG) analysis service designed specifically for animal studies of psychiatric disorders, with up to seven independent references for increased flexibility and accuracy of data collection. Our electrophysiology analysis platform enables seamless subject and study management through reliable and flexible study acquisition and review.

Fig. 1 Electroencephalogram/electromyogram (EEG/EMG) telemetry in rodents as a potential index of stress. (Lezak KR, et al., 2017)

Introduction of Electroencephalography (EEG) in psychiatry

The EEG is a non-invasive test that can help diagnose psychiatric and neuropsychiatric disorders. Powerful new EEG methods, such as topographic EEG mapping, wavelet analysis, and tests for nonlinear kinetic properties and short-term sequence correlation, are now available to investigate the extent to which EEG can index human thinking and sensation, and by extrapolation to animals. However, because muscle activity alters the quality of recordings, most animal EEG recordings are obtained using invasive methods and deeply implanted electrodes. In this case, the electrodes record cortical activity directly (electrocorticography), resulting in high quality data.

EEG Services

Ace Therapeutics offers several translational EEG methods, including pharmaco-EEG and sleep-EEG.

Pharmaco-EEG can be used to study the effects of CNS-active compounds on brain activity. We can monitor psychotropic drug toxicity at the CNS level as well as predict response to psychotropic drug treatment by performing continuous EEG on animal models after acute or chronic compound treatment.

Sleep-EEG can be used to measure impaired sleep continuity, disinhibition of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, and changes in non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep and arousal, and can be applied to the study of molecules of central nervous system activity and animal models of psychiatric disorders. Typical outcome measures we have generated for each of the 4 sleep stages (active and quiet arousal, NREM and REM sleep) include REM episodes, NREM episodes, REM latency, sleep duration, sleep architecture, hypnograms, and sleep transitions, microarousals, continuous REM episodes, and sleep spindle waves.

What Can We Help You Achieve in Psychiatry with EEG?

• Classifying psychotropic drugs and assessing their pharmacodynamics
• Identification of functional biomarkers associated with specific psychiatric disorders
• Assessing multiple cortical properties such as excitability, inhibition, plasticity, and connectivity
• Studying the mechanisms that generate brain activity
• Studying the neurobiology of multiple psychiatric disorders
• Assessing the effects of psychotropic drugs on bioelectrical activity in the brain
• Studying the neurophysiology of sleep
• Predicting the response to treatment in patients with different types of psychopathology
• Studying the functional interactions between cortical processes
• Studying the temporal dynamics of whole brain neuronal networks

Our Advantages

• Enhanced Security Features
• Powerful qEEG trending
• Multiple spike and event analyzer options
• Fully synchronized HD video
• Scalable remote access

Ace Therapeutics is committed to assisting you in the discovery and development of drugs for psychiatric disorders through our animal EEG study services. Our EEG studies can be used to characterize the functional effects or potential efficacy of test compounds, assess pharmacodynamic profiles, and monitor side effects and toxicity. If you would like more information about this service, please feel free to make an inquiry.

Reference

1. Lezak KR, Missig G, Carlezon WA Jr. Behavioral methods to study anxiety in rodents. Dialogues Clin Neurosci. 2017, 19(2):181-191.