QEEG and neuropsychological assessment
Preparing for your QEEG assessment
QEEG and neuropsychological assessment
In order to measure your brain activity reliably, it is important that – on the day of the assessment – you follow the simple steps we describe below:
- Wash your hair in the morning with a shampoo without conditioner and make sure it is dry.
- Please don’t use hair styling products (hairspray, gel, wax, etc.). Those products could interfere with the EEG measurements.
- Please don´t use make-up or greasy cream on your face.
- Wear comfortable clothes, for example a vest or T-shirt with v-neck (no turtleneck-sweater or other clothes with a high collar).
- It is important that at least 6 hours before the assessment you refrain from using alcohol, marihuana or other recreational drugs.
- If you feel the need to smoke tobacco, please try to smoke as little as possible and don’t smoke at least 2 hours before the assessment. It is not allowed to smoke during the assessment. These instructions apply to e-cigarettes as well.
- Please don’t consume caffeine at least 2 hours before the assessment (coffee, tea -this includes green tea-, cola, energy drinks or hot chocolate).
- Your cooperation on all of these points is very important. The test results will become unreliable if you don’t comply with the steps described above. If you don’t cooperate it is possible that the QEEG needs to be rescheduled. Any costs due to this rescheduling will be on the clients account!
QEEG and neuropsychological assessment
Where we speak of QEEG we focus on normative EEG, or QEEG data that are compared to a control group or normative database. Furthermore, we will restrict our focus to the application of QEEG to neuropsychiatric conditions, whereas more strictly neurological applications fall beyond the scope of the thesis. In this chapter where we report on EEG power measures we will only report on absolute EEG unless stated otherwise. Relative EEG power measures often obscure findings making it unclear what is actually going on in the EEG, e.g. if the total absolute alpha power is decreased, it might appear as an increased ‘relative’ beta and theta power.