Abstract :
[en] Introduction: The neural mechanisms underlying electrophysiological changes observed in patients with disorders of consciousness following a coma remain poorly understood. The aim of this article is to investigate the mechanisms underlying the differences in spontaneous electroencephalography between patients in vegetative/unresponsive wakefulness syndrome, minimally conscious state, emergence of the minimally conscious state and age-matched healthy control subjects.
<br />Methods: Forty recording of spontaneous scalp electroencephalography were performed in 27 patients who were comatose on admission, and on healthy controls. Multivariate Granger Causality and Transfer Entropy were applied on the data.
<br />Results: Distinctive patterns of putative bottlenecks of information were associated to each conscious state. Healthy controls are characterized by a greater amount of synergetic contributions from duplets of variables.
<br />Conclusion: A novel set of measures was tested to get a novel insight on the pattern of information transfer in a network of scalp electrodes in patients with disorders of consciousness.
Funding text :
This study was funded by the Belgian National Funds for Scientific Research (FNRS), Belgian Science Policy (IUAP VII project CEREBNET P7 11), Fonds Léon Fredericq, James S. McDonnell Foundation, Mind Science Foundation, European Commission (Mindbridge, DISCOS, DECODER & COST), Public Utility Foundation “Université Européenne du Travail”, “Fondazione Europea di Ricerca Biomedica”, Regione Lombardia (University of Milan), and Prin2008 (Italian Government).
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