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World J Psychiatry. Aug 19, 2025; 15(8): 107725
Published online Aug 19, 2025. doi: 10.5498/wjp.v15.i8.107725
Portable electroencephalography in early detection of depression: Progress and future directions
Pan Wang, An-Lu Dai, Xuan-Ru Guo, Hai-Teng Jiang
Pan Wang, An-Lu Dai, Department of Psychiatry and Mental Health, Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou 325035, Zhejiang Province, China
Xuan-Ru Guo, Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, Zhejiang Province, China
Xuan-Ru Guo, Liangzhu Laboratory, MOE Frontier Science Center for Brain Science and Brain-Machine Integration, State Key Laboratory of Brain-Machine Intelligence, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 311121, Zhejiang Province, China
Hai-Teng Jiang, School of Brain Science and Brain Medicine, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou 310058, Zhejiang Province, China
Hai-Teng Jiang, Affiliated Mental Health Center & Hangzhou Seventh People’s Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou 310058, Zhejiang Province, China
Co-first authors: Pan Wang and An-Lu Dai.
Author contributions: Wang P and Dai AL contributed to drafting and table preparation and made equal contributions to this manuscript as co-first authors. Dai AL performed data collection and contributed to writing; Guo XR provided critical suggestions and reviewed the manuscript for important intellectual content; Jiang HT designed the outline and coordinated the writing of the paper.
Supported by Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China-Major Projects, No. 2022ZD0212400; and National Natural Science Foundation of China, No. 82371453.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
Open Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Hai-Teng Jiang, Assistant Professor, School of Brain Science and Brain Medicine, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, No. 866 Yuhangtang Road, Hangzhou 310058, Zhejiang Province, China. h.jiang@zju.edu.cn
Received: April 1, 2025
Revised: April 22, 2025
Accepted: June 12, 2025
Published online: August 19, 2025
Processing time: 133 Days and 2 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: The application of conventional electroencephalography (EEG) in depression screening is limited by high equipment cost, operational complexity, and low clinical applicability. This minireview highlights the current research status of portable EEG in depression screening. Systematic analysis of 45 full-text studies shows portable EEG has significant potential in feature extraction (frequency domain, time domain, time-frequency analysis, nonlinear features, and functional connectivity) and prediction capability at the single-subject level when combined with machine learning. Future studies should focus on algorithm optimization, improving data quality, and promoting clinical implementation of portable EEG for depression screening.