ИСТИНА |
Войти в систему Регистрация |
|
ИСТИНА ПсковГУ |
||
Clinical evaluation of patients with disorders of consciousness (DOC) is based on the presence/ absence of appropriate behavioral responses to sensory stimuli according to subjective evaluation by a trained experimenter. However, behavioral responsiveness of minimally conscious state (MCS) patients may fluctuate over time, thus requiring repeated clinical assessments for diagnosis. In addition, clinical evaluation cannot disentangle whether the absence of intentional behavior in vegetative state/unresponsive wakefulness syndrome (VS/UWS) patients is due to the actual absence of any potentiality for consciousness or rather to a sensory-motor disconnection from the environment following severe brain lesions. Recently, Casali et al. (2013) have developed a theorydriven quantative measure of the potentiality for consciousness, independent of sensory input, motor output and subject's participation. This Perturbational Complexity Index (PCI) is computed from the electroencephalographic responses (EEG) to transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS): this index essen3ally measures the complexity of the spatiotemporal pattern of deterministic cortical activations induced by non-invasive cortical perturbation. Preliminary results reported in (Casali et al., 2013) show that in healthy subjects during non-REM (random eye movement) sleep and anesthesia (with midazolam, xenon, and propofol) PCI is lower as compared to wakefulness. Moreover, PCI in MCS patients is higher than in VS/UWS patients and comparable with emergence from MCS and locked-in syndrome patients. Here we perform a replica3on study to confirm previous results and to evaluate the feasibility of the methodology proposed by Casali et al. (2013) in our laboratory.