A study by the Human Brain Project (HBP), led by scientists from the University of Liège (Belgium), has explored new techniques that may help distinguish between two different neurological conditions in patients with severe brain damage and or in a coma. The results of this study have just been published in open access in the journal eLife.
One of the greatest challenges in the field of neurology and critical care medicine is to correctly diagnose the level of consciousness of a patient in a coma due to a severe brain injury. Scientists at the Human Brain Project (HBP) – an international project involving more than 500 researchers that aims to gain a deeper understanding of the complex structure and function of the human brain through a unique interdisciplinary approach at the interface of neuroscience and technology – have been exploring new techniques that could help distinguish between two different neurological conditions.
The results of this new study, just published in the journal eLife, reveal important information about the mechanisms of consciousness disorders. The team of researchers from the University of Liège (GIGA Consciousness Research Unit, Coma Science Group, Faculty of Medicine) and the University Hospital of Liège (Belgium), the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Spain), the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (Netherlands), among others, assessed the states of functional brain networks as a marker of consciousness in order to potentially distinguish between patients in unresponsive wakefulness syndromes (UWS) and the state of minimal consciousness (MCS).
