Auditory Processing in Severely Brain Injured Patients
Open Access
- 1 February 2004
- journal article
- clinical trial
- Published by American Medical Association (AMA) in Archives of Neurology
- Vol. 61 (2) , 233-238
- https://doi.org/10.1001/archneur.61.2.233
Abstract
The minimally conscious state (MCS) has recently been defined as "a condition of severely altered consciousness in which minimal but definite behavioral evidence of self or environmental awareness is demonstrated".1(pp350-351) Bedside evaluation of residual cognitive function in patients in an MCS is difficult because they are rapidly exhausted and may show fluctuating levels of arousal, attention, and motor responsiveness. We used 15O-radiolabeled water–positron emission tomography (PET) to objectively measure cerebral activation patterns in response to auditory stimuli in patients in an MCS and compared it with that observed in healthy control subjects and in patients in a persistent vegetative state (PVS). Given that our previous studies have stressed the role of functional cerebral integration deficits in unconscious patients in a PVS,2,3 we also looked for differences in cortico-cortical functional connectivity4 during auditory processing in patients in an MCS compared with patients in a PVS.Keywords
This publication has 1 reference indexed in Scilit:
- Medical Aspects of the Persistent Vegetative StateNew England Journal of Medicine, 1994