Active clinical trials for "Consciousness Disorders"

The aim of this study was to investigate diagnostic accuracy of the vegetative and minimally conscious state: Clinical consensus versus standardized neurobehavioral assessment

When patients survive a severe brain injury but fail to fully recover, they often enter a Disorder of Consciousness (DoC) --that is, a set of related conditions of decreased awareness and arousal including the Vegetative State (VS) and the Minimally Conscious State (MCS). When these conditions become chronic, there are no approved treatments to help bolster any further recovery. In prior work, we have shown the clinical feasibility and potential of Low Intensity Focused Ultrasound Pulsation (LIFUP) as a remarkably safe form of non-invasive brain stimulation in these conditions.

the aim of this study was to estimate the relations between Bispectral Index values and explicit or implicit memory or dreams during two different minimal alveolar concentration (MAC) of sevoflurane in patients undergoing blended anaesthesia for major abdominal surgery and ,in this way, estimate the possibility to reduce, in presence of a deep analgesia, like epidural analgesia, the requirement of halogenated volatile anesthetics.

Objectives: (1) To check music or voice message influence on vital signs, facial expressions or muscular tonus of coma, vegetative or sedated patients; (2) To connect the existence of patient's responsiveness with the Glasgow Coma Scale or with the Ramsay Sedation Scale; (3)To evaluate the relation between the response and the score of Glasgow Outcome Scale.

Chronic consciousness disorders have high level of impact on public health and its costs.

The explanation of consciousness poses one of the greatest challenges to science and philosophy in the 21st century. It remains unclear what consciousness is and how it emerges from brain activity. By studying anesthesia and sleep, the investigators aim to reveal what happens in the brain when consciousness is lost and when it returns. During the study, a series of Positron Emission Tomography (PET), Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and electroencephalography (EEG) studies will be carried out on healthy male subjects to reveal the neural correlates of consciousness. Consciousness of the subjects will be manipulated with normal sleep and anesthetic agents dexmedetomidine and propofol. First, various neurophysiological tools to separate consciousness, connectedness and responsiveness during normal sleep will be tested. The most suitable methods and subjects will be selected and then tested during anesthetic-induced sedation and loss of responsiveness (LOR). The anesthetics (dexmedetomidine or propofol) will be administered as target-controlled infusions (TCI) with step-wise concentration-increments until LOR is detected. Then, TCIs are repeated in the same subjects but adjusted according to the individual drug target concentrations sufficient for LOR, and a series of PET perfusion imaging measurements will be performed to obtain the brain activity information in various states of consciousness. The same subjects will then be imaged with PET for brain activity after sleep deprivation (awake), during various sleep stages and immediately after awakening. Finally, ten dexmedetomidine subjects will be given the drug once more, and functional MRI (fMRI) data will be collected at various states of consciousness before and during verbal and nonverbal vocalizations. EEG will be continuously collected in all sessions. The depth of anesthesia will be measured using quantitative EEG and bispectral index (BIS) monitoring. The results may lead to the discovery of new and better objective indicators of the depth of anesthesia and consciousness, and new insights into the understanding of neural mechanisms behind drug-induced loss of consciousness and ultimately the mechanisms of action of (general) anesthetics as well as consciousness itself.

Disentangling the vegetative state from the minimally conscious state is often difficult when relying only on behavioral observation. In this study, the investigators explored a new event-related potential paradigm as an alternative method for the detection of voluntary brain activity and cognitive abilities in the patients with disorders of consciousness.

The aim of the present study was to evaluated the neural effect of music on the cerebral activation in unresponsive wakefulness syndrome (UWS) and minimally conscious state (MCS) by using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between behaviorally assessed consciousness levels and responsiveness to nociception in patients with disorders of consciousness (DOC)

This study aims to explore autonomic cardiovascular regulation, through measures of heart rate variability (HRV), during different passive and active activities in patients with severe acquired brain injury and a low conscious state. Data from active rehabilitation will be compared with passive periods of rest as well as nightly variance during a continuous 5-day period.