Time-Dependent Psychotropic Drug Effects

The importance of timing medications is noted in the context of the effects of psychotropic drugs. The information here assembled as yet is examined mostly by inspection with the unaided eye and conventional (rather than time series-related) statistics. An effect of time, shown by an analysis of variance, however, awaits an inferential statistical estimation of the cycles’ parameters and of their uncertainties. In summarizing drug effects, only peak times may be tabulated—time-macroscopically (tma)—as clock-hours and times in relation to the synchronizing 12-hourly alternation of light and darkness, a proxy for a marker rhythm. A large body of such carefully collected information here included, however, awaits further time-microscopic (tmi) computer-implemented time series analyses that rely on all available data. Among many other procedures, curve-fitting assesses the uncertainties involved in detecting a reproducible rhythm and/or provides interval as well as point estimates of parameters, such as amplitudes, A, and acrophases, φ, when a single component is fitted. The magnitude and orthophase are the predictable extent of change within a cycle and peak of the fitted model when two or more components are considered. The period involved should be estimated as soon as the length of the time series permits. The A and φ values here computed from mean values taken off a graph should be only an incentive to tmi analyze the original data, so that charts can be mapped that are based on all of the data, rather than depending on the vagaries of peak locations.