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Towards New Diagnostic Approaches in Disorders of Consciousness: A Proof of Concept Study on the Promising Use of Imagery Visuomotor Task
Background: advanced paraclinical approaches using functional neuroimaging and electroencephalography (EEG) allow identifying patients who are covertly aware despite being diagnosed as unresponsive wakefulness syndrome (UWS). Bedside detection of covert awareness employing motor imagery tasks (MI),...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
MDPI
2020
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7603054/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33080823 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/brainsci10100746 |
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author | Naro, Antonino Calabrò, Rocco Salvatore |
author_facet | Naro, Antonino Calabrò, Rocco Salvatore |
author_sort | Naro, Antonino |
collection | PubMed |
description | Background: advanced paraclinical approaches using functional neuroimaging and electroencephalography (EEG) allow identifying patients who are covertly aware despite being diagnosed as unresponsive wakefulness syndrome (UWS). Bedside detection of covert awareness employing motor imagery tasks (MI), which is a universally accepted clinical indicator of awareness in the absence of overt behavior, may miss some of these patients, as they could still have a certain level of awareness. We aimed at assessing covert awareness in patients with UWS using a visuomotor-guided motor imagery task (VMI) during EEG recording. Methods: nine patients in a minimally conscious state (MCS), 11 patients in a UWS, and 15 healthy individuals (control group—CG) were provided with an VMI (imagine dancing while watching a group dance video to command), a simple-MI (imagine squeezing their right hand to command), and an advanced-MI (imagine dancing without watching a group dance video to command) to detect command-following. We analyzed the command-specific EEG responses (event-related synchronization/desynchronization—ERS/ERD) of each patient, assessing whether these responses were appropriate, consistent, and statistically similar to those elicited in the CG, as reliable markers of motor imagery. Results: All patients in MCS, all healthy individuals and one patient in UWS repeatedly and reliably generated appropriate EEG responses to distinct commands of motor imagery with a classification accuracy of 60–80%. Conclusions: VMI outperformed significantly MI tasks. Therefore, patients in UWS may be still misdiagnosed despite a rigorous clinical assessment and an appropriate MI assessment. It is thus possible to suggest that motor imagery tasks should be delivered to patients with chronic disorders of consciousness in visuomotor-aided modality (also in the rehabilitation setting) to greatly entrain patient’s participation. In this regard, the EEG approach we described has the clear advantage of being cheap, portable, widely available, and objective. It may be thus considered as, at least, a screening tool to identify the patients who deserve further, advanced paraclinical approaches. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7603054 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2020 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-76030542020-11-01 Towards New Diagnostic Approaches in Disorders of Consciousness: A Proof of Concept Study on the Promising Use of Imagery Visuomotor Task Naro, Antonino Calabrò, Rocco Salvatore Brain Sci Article Background: advanced paraclinical approaches using functional neuroimaging and electroencephalography (EEG) allow identifying patients who are covertly aware despite being diagnosed as unresponsive wakefulness syndrome (UWS). Bedside detection of covert awareness employing motor imagery tasks (MI), which is a universally accepted clinical indicator of awareness in the absence of overt behavior, may miss some of these patients, as they could still have a certain level of awareness. We aimed at assessing covert awareness in patients with UWS using a visuomotor-guided motor imagery task (VMI) during EEG recording. Methods: nine patients in a minimally conscious state (MCS), 11 patients in a UWS, and 15 healthy individuals (control group—CG) were provided with an VMI (imagine dancing while watching a group dance video to command), a simple-MI (imagine squeezing their right hand to command), and an advanced-MI (imagine dancing without watching a group dance video to command) to detect command-following. We analyzed the command-specific EEG responses (event-related synchronization/desynchronization—ERS/ERD) of each patient, assessing whether these responses were appropriate, consistent, and statistically similar to those elicited in the CG, as reliable markers of motor imagery. Results: All patients in MCS, all healthy individuals and one patient in UWS repeatedly and reliably generated appropriate EEG responses to distinct commands of motor imagery with a classification accuracy of 60–80%. Conclusions: VMI outperformed significantly MI tasks. Therefore, patients in UWS may be still misdiagnosed despite a rigorous clinical assessment and an appropriate MI assessment. It is thus possible to suggest that motor imagery tasks should be delivered to patients with chronic disorders of consciousness in visuomotor-aided modality (also in the rehabilitation setting) to greatly entrain patient’s participation. In this regard, the EEG approach we described has the clear advantage of being cheap, portable, widely available, and objective. It may be thus considered as, at least, a screening tool to identify the patients who deserve further, advanced paraclinical approaches. MDPI 2020-10-17 /pmc/articles/PMC7603054/ /pubmed/33080823 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/brainsci10100746 Text en © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
spellingShingle | Article Naro, Antonino Calabrò, Rocco Salvatore Towards New Diagnostic Approaches in Disorders of Consciousness: A Proof of Concept Study on the Promising Use of Imagery Visuomotor Task |
title | Towards New Diagnostic Approaches in Disorders of Consciousness: A Proof of Concept Study on the Promising Use of Imagery Visuomotor Task |
title_full | Towards New Diagnostic Approaches in Disorders of Consciousness: A Proof of Concept Study on the Promising Use of Imagery Visuomotor Task |
title_fullStr | Towards New Diagnostic Approaches in Disorders of Consciousness: A Proof of Concept Study on the Promising Use of Imagery Visuomotor Task |
title_full_unstemmed | Towards New Diagnostic Approaches in Disorders of Consciousness: A Proof of Concept Study on the Promising Use of Imagery Visuomotor Task |
title_short | Towards New Diagnostic Approaches in Disorders of Consciousness: A Proof of Concept Study on the Promising Use of Imagery Visuomotor Task |
title_sort | towards new diagnostic approaches in disorders of consciousness: a proof of concept study on the promising use of imagery visuomotor task |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7603054/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33080823 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/brainsci10100746 |
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