Electroencephalogram-based pharmacodynamic measures: a review

Pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics can provide a useful modeling framework for predicting drug activity and can serve as a basis for dose optimization. Determining a suitable biomarker or surrogate measure of drug effect for pharmacodynamic models can be challenging. The electroencephalograph is a widely-available and non-invasive tool for recording brainwave activity simultaneously from multiple brain regions. Certain drug classes (such as drugs that act on the central nervous system) also generate a reproducible electroencephalogram (EEG) effect. Characterization of such a drug-induced EEG effect can produce pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic models useful for titrating drug levels and expediting development of chemically-similar drug analogs. This paper reviews the relevant concepts involved in pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic modeling using EEG-based pharmacodynamic measures. In addition, examples of such models for various drugs are organized by drug activity as well as chemical structure and presented.