2021 Volume 61 Issue 1 Pages 24-30
Psychosomatic medical care also plays the role of helping patients who slip between psychiatry and internal medicine, by re-evaluating their bio-psychological and social aspects and readjusting their diagnosis and treatment process with those factors in mind. When examining psychological and psychiatric factors, the evaluation of the brain is important. CT and MRI are used for morphological evaluation, but this is not a functional source of information. Electroencephalography is the only prevailing examination that can objectively evaluate brain function.
It is a low-invasive examination which uses electrodes attached to the scalp to record minute electrical activities in the brain and it can be found in most hospitals. The test is mainly used when epilepsy or disturbance of consciousness is suspected, but it is also used when judging brain death, and can be called the test which checks ‘whether the brain is operating normally.’ We also believe EEG can be used to evaluate if symptoms are from psychological aspects or from disturbance in brain function, which can help evaluate senile depression, delirium, vascular epilepsy, and dementia, or differentiate panic disorder from epileptic seizures. Here, we will report the practical use of electroencephalography in psychosomatic medicine, including a case report.
