Test helps target best medications for depression

Often, though, it's difficult for psychiatrists to know which drug to prescribe. Now, San Antonio doctors are conducting a unique study to find a better way to choose medications through a painless test called an electroencephalogram, or EEG.

For the EEG test, a technologist hooks more than 20 electrodes up to the patient's head. Over the next 30 minutes, the wires will transmit signals from sensors that record brain waves. The waves may be altered by bouts of major depression.

"It's very unique and novel," said Dr. Pedro Delgado, a psychiatrist at the University of Texas Health Science Center. "We know that in people with depression, during the state of being depressed, their brain waves change."

However, what doctors don't know is which of the more than 30 medications for depression work best for different brain wave changes.

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