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SECONDs Administration Guidelines: A Fast Tool to Assess Consciousness in Brain-injured Patients
Published on: February 6, 2021
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Chronic consciousness disorders.
1Neurology Section, Dartmouth Medical School, Hanover, New Hampshire 03756, USA. bernat@dartmouth.edu
Annual Review of Medicine
|July 28, 2009
Summary
Physicians assess consciousness through wakefulness and awareness. Advanced functional neuroimaging, like fMRI, may detect awareness in unresponsive patients, potentially changing clinical practices for diagnosing consciousness disorders.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Clinical Neurology
Background:
- Consciousness is challenging to define, but clinically assessed via wakefulness and awareness.
- Current diagnostic criteria for unconsciousness syndromes have indistinct boundaries.
- Functional neuroimaging offers a complementary method to assess consciousness.
Purpose of the Study:
- To explore the role of functional neuroimaging in assessing consciousness.
- To investigate the potential of fMRI in detecting awareness in unresponsive patients.
Main Methods:
- Review of clinical assessments of consciousness.
- Analysis of recent studies using functional neuroimaging (PET and fMRI) in unresponsive patients.
Main Results:
- Functional neuroimaging, particularly fMRI, shows promise in detecting conscious awareness.
- fMRI may identify awareness when neurological exams cannot.
Conclusions:
- Functional neuroimaging may significantly alter clinical practices for diagnosing and classifying unconscious patients.
- These technologies could enhance our understanding of the biology of consciousness.
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