Heartbeat Can Help Detect Signs of Consciousness in Patients After a Coma

AHA Publisher — Wed, 28 Apr 2021 07:00:23 +0000

L’Université de Liège via Newswise – A new study conducted jointly by the University of Liege (Belgium) and the Ecole normale superieure – PSL (France) shows that heart brain interactions, measured using electroencephalography (EEG), provide a novel diagnostic avenue for patients with disorders of consciousness. This study is published in the Journal of Neuroscience. Catherine Tallon-Baudry (ENS, CNRS) introduces : “The scientific community already knew that in healthy participants, the brain’s response to heartbeats is related to perceptual, bodily and self-consciousness. We now show that we can obtain clinically meaningful information if we probe this interaction in patients with disorders of consciousness.” In the past decades several important improvements for the diagnosis of these patients have been made, yet, it remains a big challenge to measure self-consciousness in these patients that cannot communicate. For their study, the researchers included 68 patients with a disorder of consciousness. Fifty-five patients suffered from the minimally conscious state, and showed fluctuating but consistent signs of consciousness but were unable to communicate, and 13 patients in the unresponsive wakefulness state (previously called vegetative state) who do not show any behavioural sign of awareness. These patients were diagnosed using the coma recovery scale-revised, a standardized clinical test to assess conscious behaviour. “As these patients suffered from severe brain injury, they might be unable to show behavioural signs of awareness. Therefore, we also based our diagnosis on the brain’s metabolism as probe for consciousness. This is a state-of-the art neuroimaging technique that helps to improve the diagnosis of patients with disorders of consciousness. Although these scans are very informative, they can only be acquired in specialized centers,” says Jitka Annen (GIGA Consciousness, ULiege). The researchers recorded brain activity during resting state (i.e. without specific task or stimulation). They selected EEG segments right after a heartbeat and EEG segments at random timepoints (i.e. not time-locked to a heartbeat). They then used machine learning algorithms to classify (or diagnose) patients into the two diagnostic groups. Diego Candia-Rivera (ENS) further comments: “EEG segments not locked to heartbeats were informative to predict if a patient was conscious or not, but EEG segments locked to heartbeats were more accurate in doing so. Our results indicate that the heartbeat evoked potential can give us supplementary evidence for the presence of consciousness.” It is important to note that the heartbeat evoked responses were more in accordance with the diagnosis based on brain metabolism than the diagnosis based on behavioural assessment. It seems therefore that the heartbeat evoked response can be used to measure a perspective of self-consciousness that is not assessed successfully using behavioural tools. “The next challenge is to translate our findings to clinical applications so that all patients with disorders of consciousness can benefit from better diagnosis using widely available bedside assessment technologies,” concludes Steven Laureys, head of GIGA Consciousness research unit and Centre du Cerveau (ULiege, CHU Liege).

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Scientists Discover New Way to Diagnose Neurological Conditions

AHA Publisher — Fri, 05 Mar 2021 08:00:53 +0000

Abigail Klein Leichman via Israel21c – Using algorithms to analyze electroencephalogram (EEG) patterns could rapidly diagnose brain blood vessel pathology indicating the potential for Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy, traumatic brain injury and stroke. The new method from Dr. Dan Milikovsky and Prof. Alon Friedman at the Zlotowski Center for Neuroscience at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev is based on Friedman’s discovery that patients with these brain conditions display nonconvulsive epileptic seizure-like activity that can be detected by EEG recordings. The study was published in Science Translational Medicine by a team of authors including researchers from academic institutions and medical centers in Israel, the United States and Canada. “Research from our lab and others, shows that the pathological changes in the brain blood vessels, which are usually referred to as the blood-brain barrier (BBB), contribute to the formation of Alzheimer’s disease and other brain disorders,” said Friedman. “Since dysfunction of the BBB is also a key component in the pathogenesis of epilepsy, we hypothesized that BBB dysfunction in Alzheimer’s patients would also trigger abnormal brain activity that could be detected by EEG, an accessible and affordable tool used in the clinic, and serve as a diagnostic method for these conditions.” The technology was successfully tested on animal models and dozens of patients and is now been validated on large databases of EEG records of thousands of patients. “The technology offers a biomarker for immediate results and allows for the continuous monitoring of the progression of the neurological condition and response to treatment,” said Josh Peleg, CEO of BGN Technologies, the technology transfer company of Ben-Gurion University. “We are now seeking a potential industry partner for the further development of this promising method for a variety of applications, from monitoring of ICU patients to patients after stroke and head injuries and for the diagnosis of vascular pathology in early Alzheimer’s disease.” To read the original article click here. For more articles from Israel21c click here.

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Heartbeat Can Help Detect Signs of Consciousness in Patients After a Coma

Scientists Discover New Way to Diagnose Neurological Conditions