Every discipline has a forgotten story—an origin myth buried beneath decades of technological shifts and academic politics. For psychiatry, that story begins in a small room in Jena, Germany, where a quiet, introspective psychiatrist named Hans Berger attached electrodes to a human scalp and recorded the first electrical rhythms of the living brain.

Today, EEG is often seen as the territory of neurologists. QEEG sits with neuroscientists, cognitive engineers, and sleep technicians. Neurofeedback is claimed by psychologists and biohackers. The field that birthed EEG—psychiatry—seems oddly distant from its own creation.

It’s worth rediscovering how this happened.

Hans Berger: The Psychiatrist Who Heard the Brain Speak

Hans Berger was not a neurologist, nor an engineer. He was a psychiatrist, deeply curious about the relationship between subjective experience and objective brain activity. He wanted to understand how thought becomes biology, how feelings flicker across neuronal networks, and whether consciousness had measurable signatures.

His research was, at its heart, pure psychiatry.

In 1924, Berger recorded the first human EEG and described the alpha wave, a rhythm that still bears his name as the “Berger rhythm.” He hoped EEG would:

• reveal the biological signatures of mental states
• distinguish psychiatric illnesses
• provide objective windows into subjective suffering

In other words, he believed EEG would become a psychiatrist’s instrument—a bridge between mind and brain.

So How Did Psychiatry Lose EEG?

Several quiet shifts happened over the next century.

1. Neurology became the home of “electrical organs.”

As medicine stratified, anything involving nerves, spikes, or conduction was placed under neurology. EEG’s early clinical applications—epilepsy, sleep disorders—fit neurological practice more than psychiatric.

Psychiatry, meanwhile, moved toward:

• psychoanalysis
• phenomenology
• psychotherapy
• later, psychopharmacology

While neurology embraced electrical models, psychiatry embraced meaning and behaviour.

The disciplines drifted.

2. The rise of psychoanalysis pushed psychiatry “away from the brain.”

From the 1930s through 1960s, psychiatry’s dominant paradigm was psychoanalytic. The mind—not the brain—was the object of study.

This era viewed biological investigations as reductionist, even unfashionable.

While neurology built technology, psychiatry built theory.

EEG slowly migrated.

3. Psychopharmacology changed the priorities.

With the arrival of chlorpromazine, lithium, imipramine, and benzodiazepines, psychiatry entered a golden age of medication.

Tools for diagnosis became less mechanistic and more symptomatic.

EEG no longer defined psychiatric illness. DSM categories became behavioural, not biological. And because psychiatric disorders lacked clean EEG signatures (unlike epilepsy), the field stepped back.

Neurology stepped in fully.

4. Technological barriers made EEG difficult to own.

EEG equipment was:

• expensive
• bulky
• maintenance-heavy
• complex to interpret

In the mid-20th century, psychiatrists in general practice could not easily adopt EEG machines. Neurology departments controlled the hardware, the technicians, and the training.

Ownership followed availability.

5. Psychiatry became cautious about “biological reductionism.”

When the discipline eventually embraced neuroscience again (1980s onward), structural imaging (CT, MRI) stole the limelight. EEG was considered too noisy, too crude, too non-specific.

Psychiatry turned to neurochemistry and receptor pharmacology. Brainwaves felt antiquated.

The Result: A Technology Born in Psychiatry Became a Tool Outside It

By the 1990s, EEG belonged to:

• neurologists
• sleep physicians
• neurophysiology labs
• cognitive neuroscientists
• psychologists
• bioengineers
• brain–computer interface researchers

And later, QEEG and neurofeedback became domains dominated by non-psychiatrists.

Psychiatry had invented the telescope… and then looked away from the stars.

Why Psychiatrists Are Now Returning to EEG and QEEG

The tide is turning. Psychiatry is rediscovering its birthright.

Several forces are pulling EEG back into the psychiatric orbit:

1. The precision psychiatry movement

Patients and clinicians want objective biomarkers—something beyond checklists and subjective interpretation.

QEEG provides:

• neural signatures of ADHD (theta/beta ratios, frontal underactivation)
• executive-function patterns
• markers of anxiety, PTSD, and depression
• neurofeedback pathways for intervention

The field fits psychiatry’s future.

2. The rise of non-invasive neuromodulation

rTMS, tDCS, tACS, neurofeedback, and closed-loop brain stimulation all require understanding brain networks.

EEG is the natural companion.

Psychiatrists who deliver neuromodulation find QEEG a map before the journey.

3. Affordable, portable EEG devices

What once required a lab now fits into a clinic.

• 19-channel EEG headsets
• Dry electrodes
• AI-based artifact cleaning
• Normative databases

For the first time since Hans Berger recorded his sister’s alpha rhythm, EEG is literally within arm’s reach of every psychiatrist.

4. The convergence of AI + electrophysiology

AI amplifies EEG the way microscopes amplified microbiology.

Algorithms can now detect patterns too subtle for human eyes.
QEEG maps can be personalised.
ADHD assessment becomes data-driven.
Treatment becomes stratified.

This is exactly the world Berger imagined.

So The Question Becomes: Will Psychiatry Reclaim EEG?

Psychiatry has the philosophical mandate: understanding the brain–mind axis.

Neurology focuses on structural lesions.
Psychology focuses on cognitive patterns.
Engineering focuses on signals.

Only psychiatry focuses on the lived experience mediated by brain networks.

EEG—and especially QEEG—belongs naturally in this space.

What psychiatry lost through historical drift, it can regain through intentional reintegration.

Hans Berger was the first psychiatric neuroscientist.
The field is finally catching up to him.

About the Author

Dr. Srinivas Rajkumar T, MD (AIIMS), DNB, MBA (BITS Pilani)
Senior Consultant Psychiatrist & Neurofeedback Specialist
Mind & Memory Clinic, Apollo Clinic Velachery (Opp. Phoenix Mall)
✉ srinivasaiims@gmail.com 📞 +91-8595155808