Deciding between different evidence-based treatment options in mental health care still relies on trial-and-error following the stepped-care approach (escalating from least intensive to more intensive treatments after treatment failures). Much recent research is focused on biomarkers and precision psychiatry, however here I will present that stratified psychiatry could be a more practical and realistic alternative capable of leveraging elements from stepped-care to develop a much more suitable and realistic stratified matched-care approach to serve our patients suffering from mental health disorders. In this presentation the development, validation and out-of-sample validation of Brainmarker-I (an alpha frequency-based biomarker) for treatment stratification in ADHD (neurofeedback vs. methylphenidate) and Depression (psychotherapy, sertraline, venlafaxine, TMS-protocols, ECT and Ketamine) treatments will be presented. Validation and development was performed on the TDBRAIN+ EEG dataset comprising N>4000, and blinded-out-of-sample validations for stratification performance in external datasets. In addition, new insights for other Brainmarkers will be presented including EEG-network analyses (fICA) and the beta-spindle inspired Brainmarker-III.

Martijn Arns is a biological psychologist and entrepreneur with expertise in applied neuroscience and medtech. A graduate of Radboud University in Nijmegen, his career spans roles at institutions such as Westmead Hospital (Sydney), Max Planck Institute (Munich), and Stanford University, where he is currently a visiting scholar at the Stanford Brain Stimulation Lab. Martijn also serves as Associate Professor at Maastricht University, focusing on Brain Stimulation and Cognition.

 

In 2001, Martijn founded Research Institute Brainclinics, now part of the Brainclinics Foundation, driving applied neuroscience innovations in interventional psychiatry. His groundbreaking work includes brain stimulation techniques like rTMS for depression, Heart-Brain Coupling, and EEG-based precision psychiatry. With over 200 scientific publications, four patents, and multiple spin-offs—including neurocare group and the Brainmarker platform—Martijn continues to transform neuroscience into clinically actionable solutions.