Public Library of Science, PLoS ONE, 8(16), p. e0255529, 2021
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0255529
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No diagnostic or predictive instruments to help with early diagnosis and timely therapeutic intervention are available as yet for most neuro-psychiatric disorders. A quantum potential mean and variability score (qpmvs), to identify neuropsychiatric and neurocognitive disorders with high accuracy, based on routine EEG recordings, was developed. Information processing in the brain is assumed to involve integration of neuronal activity in various areas of the brain. Thus, the presumed quantum-like structure allows quantification of connectivity as a function of space and time (locality) as well as of instantaneous quantum-like effects in information space (non-locality). EEG signals reflect the holistic (nonseparable) function of the brain, including the highly ordered hierarchy of the brain, expressed by the quantum potential according to Bohmian mechanics, combined with dendrogram representation of data and p-adic numbers. Participants consisted of 230 participants including 28 with major depression, 42 with schizophrenia, 65 with cognitive impairment, and 95 controls. Routine EEG recordings were used for the calculation of qpmvs based on ultrametric analyses, closely coupled with p-adic numbers and quantum theory. Based on area under the curve, high accuracy was obtained in separating healthy controls from those diagnosed with schizophrenia (p<0.0001), depression (p<0.0001), Alzheimer’s disease (AD; p<0.0001), and mild cognitive impairment (MCI; p<0.0001) as well as in differentiating participants with schizophrenia from those with depression (p<0.0001), AD (p<0.0001) or MCI (p<0.0001) and in differentiating people with depression from those with AD (p<0.0001) or MCI (p<0.0001). The novel EEG analytic algorithm (qpmvs) seems to be a useful and sufficiently accurate tool for diagnosis of neuropsychiatric and neurocognitive diseases and may be able to predict disease course and response to treatment.