Brain activity can help predict who'll benefit from an antidepressant

An AI can predict from people's brainwaves whether an antidepressant is likely to help them. The technique may offer a new approach to prescribing medicines for mental illnesses. "We have a central problem in psychiatry because we characterise diseases by their end point, such as what behaviours they cause," says Amit Etkin at Stanford University in California. "You tell me you're depressed, and I don't know any more than that. I don't really know what's going on in the brain and we prescribe medication on very little information."