Re-awakening the brain: Forcing transitions in disorders of consciousness by external in silico perturbation.

A fundamental challenge in neuroscience is accurately defining brain states and predicting how and where to perturb the brain to force a transition. Here, we investigated resting-state fMRI data of patients suffering from disorders of consciousness (DoC) after coma (minimally conscious and unresponsive wakefulness states) and healthy controls. We applied model-free and model-based approaches to help elucidate the underlying brain mechanisms of patients with DoC. The model-free approach allowed us to characterize brain states in DoC and healthy controls as a probabilistic metastable substate (PMS) space. The PMS of each group was defined by a repertoire of unique patterns (i.e., metastable substates) with different probabilities of occurrence. In the model-based approach, we adjusted the PMS of each DoC group to a causal whole-brain model. This allowed us to explore optimal strategies for promoting transitions by applying off-line in silico probing. Furthermore, this approach enabled us to evaluate the impact of local perturbations in terms of their global effects and sensitivity to stimulation, which is a model-based biomarker providing a deeper understanding of the mechanisms underlying DoC. Our results show that transitions were obtained in a synchronous protocol, in which the somatomotor network, thalamus, precuneus and insula were the most sensitive areas to perturbation. This motivates further work to continue understanding brain function and treatments of disorders of consciousness.

The effect of prolonged spaceflight on cerebrospinal fluid and perivascular spaces of astronauts and cosmonauts.

Long-duration spaceflight induces changes to the brain and cerebrospinal fluid compartments and visual acuity problems known as spaceflight-associated neuro-ocular syndrome (SANS). The clinical relevance of these changes and whether they equally affect crews of different space agencies remain unknown. We used MRI to analyze the alterations occurring in the perivascular spaces (PVS) in NASA and European Space Agency astronauts and Roscosmos cosmonauts after a 6-mo spaceflight on the International Space Station (ISS). We found increased volume of basal ganglia PVS and white matter PVS (WM-PVS) after spaceflight, which was more prominent in the NASA crew than the Roscosmos crew. Moreover, both crews demonstrated a similar degree of lateral ventricle enlargement and decreased subarachnoid space at the vertex, which was correlated with WM-PVS enlargement. As all crews experienced the same environment aboard the ISS, the differences in WM-PVS enlargement may have been due to, among other factors, differences in the use of countermeasures and high-resistive exercise regimes, which can influence brain fluid redistribution. Moreover, NASA astronauts who developed SANS had greater pre- and postflight WM-PVS volumes than those unaffected. These results provide evidence for a potential link between WM-PVS fluid and SANS.

Changes in high-order interaction measures of synergy and redundancy during non-ordinary states of consciousness induced by meditation, hypnosis, and auto-induced cognitive trance.

High-order interactions are required across brain regions to accomplish specific cognitive functions. These functional interdependencies are reflected by synergistic information that can be obtained by combining the information from all the sources considered and redundant information (i.e., common information provided by all the sources). However, electroencephalogram (EEG) functional connectivity is limited to pairwise interactions thereby precluding the estimation of high-order interactions. In this multicentric study, we used measures of synergistic and redundant information to study in parallel the high-order interactions between five EEG electrodes during three non-ordinary states of consciousness (NSCs): Rajyoga meditation (RM), hypnosis, and auto-induced cognitive trance (AICT). We analyzed EEG data from 22 long-term Rajyoga meditators, nine volunteers undergoing hypnosis, and 21 practitioners of AICT. We here report the within-group changes in synergy and redundancy for each NSC in comparison with their respective baseline. During RM, synergy increased at the whole brain level in the delta and theta bands. Redundancy decreased in frontal, right central, and posterior electrodes in delta, and frontal, central, and posterior electrodes in beta1 and beta2 bands. During hypnosis, synergy decreased in mid-frontal, temporal, and mid-centro-parietal electrodes in the delta band. The decrease was also observed in the beta2 band in the left frontal and right parietal electrodes. During AICT, synergy decreased in delta and theta bands in left-frontal, right-frontocentral, and posterior electrodes. The decrease was also observed at the whole brain level in the alpha band. However, redundancy changes during hypnosis and AICT were not significant. The subjective reports of absorption and dissociation during hypnosis and AICT, as well as the mystical experience questionnaires during AICT, showed no correlation with the high-order measures. The proposed study is the first exploratory attempt to utilize the concepts of synergy and redundancy in NSCs. The differences in synergy and redundancy during different NSCs warrant further studies to relate the extracted measures with the phenomenology of the NSCs.

Beyond alpha power: EEG spatial and spectral gradients robustly stratify disorders of consciousness.

Neurophysiological markers can overcome the limitations of behavioural assessments of Disorders of Consciousness (DoC). EEG alpha power emerged as a promising marker for DoC, although long-standing literature reported alpha power being sustained during anesthetic-induced unconsciousness, and reduced during dreaming and hallucinations. We hypothesized that EEG power suppression caused by severe anoxia could explain this conflict. Accordingly, we split DoC patients (n = 87) in postanoxic and non-postanoxic cohorts. Alpha power was suppressed only in severe postanoxia but failed to discriminate un/consciousness in other aetiologies. Furthermore, it did not generalize to an independent reference dataset (n = 65) of neurotypical, neurological, and anesthesia conditions. We then investigated EEG spatio-spectral gradients, reflecting anteriorization and slowing, as alternative markers. In non-postanoxic DoC, these features, combined in a bivariate model, reliably stratified patients and indexed consciousness, even in unresponsive patients identified as conscious by an independent neural marker (the Perturbational Complexity Index). Crucially, this model optimally generalized to the reference dataset. Overall, alpha power does not index consciousness; rather, its suppression entails diffuse cortical damage, in postanoxic patients. As an alternative, EEG spatio-spectral gradients, reflecting distinct pathophysiological mechanisms, jointly provide a robust, parsimonious, and generalizable marker of consciousness, whose clinical application may guide rehabilitation efforts.

Perception of diagnosis by family caregivers in severe brain injury patients in China.

OBJECTIVES: Surrogate decision-making by family caregivers for patients with severe brain injury is influenced by the availability and understanding of relevant information and expectations for future rehabilitation. We aimed to compare the consistency of family caregivers' perceptions with clinical diagnoses and to inform their expectation of prognosis in the future. METHODS: The Coma Recovery Scale-Revised was used to assess the diagnosis of inpatients with severe brain injury between February 2019 and February 2020. A main family caregiver was included per patient. The family caregiver's perception of the patient's consciousness and expectations of future recovery were collected through questionnaires and compared consistently with the clinical diagnosis. RESULTS: The final sample included 101 main family caregivers of patients (57 UWS, unresponsive wakefulness syndrome, 37 MCS, minimally conscious state, 7 EMCS, emergence from MCS) with severe brain injury. Only 57 family caregivers correctly assessed the level of consciousness as indicated by the CRS-R, showing weak consistency (Kappa = 0.217, P = 0.002). Family caregivers' demographic characteristics and CRS-R diagnosis influenced the consistency between perception and clinical diagnosis. Family caregivers who provided hands-on care to patients showed higher levels of consistent perception (AOR = 12.24, 95% CI = 2.06-73.00, P = 0.006). Compared to UWS, the family caregivers of MCS patients were more likely to have a correct perception (OR = 7.68, 95% CI = 1.34-44.06). Family caregivers had positive expectations for patients' recovery in terms of both communication and returning to normal life. CONCLUSION: Nearly half of family caregivers have inadequate understanding of their relative's level of consciousness, and most of them report overly optimistic expectations that do not align with clinical diagnosis. Providing more medical information to family caregivers to support their surrogate decision-making process is essential.

Altered Brain Connectivity and Network Topological Organization in a Non-ordinary State of Consciousness Induced by Hypnosis.

Hypnosis has been shown to be of clinical utility; however, its underlying neural mechanisms remain unclear. This study aims to investigate altered brain dynamics during the non-ordinary state of consciousness induced by hypnosis. We studied high-density EEG in 9 healthy participants during eyes-closed wakefulness and during hypnosis, induced by a muscle relaxation and eyes fixation procedure. Using hypotheses based on internal and external awareness brain networks, we assessed region-wise brain connectivity between six ROIs (right and left frontal, right and left parietal, upper and lower midline regions) at the scalp level and compared across conditions. Data-driven, graph-theory analyses were also carried out to characterize brain network topology in terms of brain network segregation and integration. During hypnosis, we observed (1) increased delta connectivity between left and right frontal, as well as between right frontal and parietal regions; (2) decreased connectivity for alpha (between right frontal and parietal and between upper and lower midline regions) and beta-2 bands (between upper midline and right frontal, frontal and parietal, also between upper and lower midline regions); and (3) increased network segregation (short-range connections) in delta and alpha bands, and increased integration (long-range connections) in beta-2 band. This higher network integration and segregation was measured bilaterally in frontal and right parietal electrodes, which were identified as central hub regions during hypnosis. This modified connectivity and increased network integration-segregation properties suggest a modification of the internal and external awareness brain networks that may reflect efficient cognitive-processing and lower incidences of mind-wandering during hypnosis.

Whole-brain analyses indicate the impairment of posterior integration and thalamo-frontotemporal broadcasting in disorders of consciousness.

The study of the brain's dynamical activity is opening a window to help the clinical assessment of patients with disorders of consciousness. For example, glucose uptake and the dysfunctional spread of naturalistic and synthetic stimuli has proven useful to characterize hampered consciousness. However, understanding of the mechanisms behind loss of consciousness following brain injury is still missing. Here, we study the propagation of endogenous and in-silico exogenous perturbations in patients with disorders of consciousness, based upon directed and causal interactions estimated from resting-state fMRI data, fitted to a linear model of activity propagation. We found that patients with disorders of consciousness suffer decreased capacity for neural propagation and responsiveness to events, and that this can be related to severe reduction of glucose metabolism as measured with [18 F]FDG-PET. In particular, we show that loss of consciousness is related to the malfunctioning of two neural circuits: the posterior cortical regions failing to convey information, in conjunction with reduced broadcasting of information from subcortical, temporal, parietal and frontal regions. These results shed light on the mechanisms behind disorders of consciousness, triangulating network function with basic measures of brain integrity and behavior.

What lies underneath: Precise classification of brain states using time-dependent topological structure of dynamics.

The self-organising global dynamics underlying brain states emerge from complex recursive nonlinear interactions between interconnected brain regions. Until now, most efforts of capturing the causal mechanistic generating principles have supposed underlying stationarity, being unable to describe the non-stationarity of brain dynamics, i.e. time-dependent changes. Here, we present a novel framework able to characterise brain states with high specificity, precisely by modelling the time-dependent dynamics. Through describing a topological structure associated to the brain state at each moment in time (its attractor or 'information structure'), we are able to classify different brain states by using the statistics across time of these structures hitherto hidden in the neuroimaging dynamics. Proving the strong potential of this framework, we were able to classify resting-state BOLD fMRI signals from two classes of post-comatose patients (minimally conscious state and unresponsive wakefulness syndrome) compared with healthy controls with very high precision.

Common Data Elements for Disorders of Consciousness: Recommendations from the Working Group on Neuroimaging.

BACKGROUND: Over the past 5 decades, advances in neuroimaging have yielded insights into the pathophysiologic mechanisms that cause disorders of consciousness (DoC) in patients with severe brain injuries. Structural, functional, metabolic, and perfusion imaging studies have revealed specific neuroanatomic regions, such as the brainstem tegmentum, thalamus, posterior cingulate cortex, medial prefrontal cortex, and occipital cortex, where lesions correlate with the current or future state of consciousness. Advanced imaging modalities, such as diffusion tensor imaging, resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and task-based fMRI, have been used to improve the accuracy of diagnosis and long-term prognosis, culminating in the endorsement of fMRI for the clinical evaluation of patients with DoC in the 2018 US (task-based fMRI) and 2020 European (task-based and resting-state fMRI) guidelines. As diverse neuroimaging techniques are increasingly used for patients with DoC in research and clinical settings, the need for a standardized approach to reporting results is clear. The success of future multicenter collaborations and international trials fundamentally depends on the implementation of a shared nomenclature and infrastructure. METHODS: To address this need, the Neurocritical Care Society's Curing Coma Campaign convened an international panel of DoC neuroimaging experts to propose common data elements (CDEs) for data collection and reporting in this field. RESULTS: We report the recommendations of this CDE development panel and disseminate CDEs to be used in neuroimaging studies of patients with DoC. CONCLUSIONS: These CDEs will support progress in the field of DoC neuroimaging and facilitate international collaboration.

Neural Responses to Heartbeats Detect Residual Signs of Consciousness during Resting State in Postcomatose Patients.

The neural monitoring of visceral inputs might play a role in first-person perspective (i.e., the unified viewpoint of subjective experience). In healthy participants, how the brain responds to heartbeats, measured as the heartbeat-evoked response (HER), correlates with perceptual, bodily, and self-consciousness. Here we show that HERs in resting-state EEG data distinguishes between postcomatose male and female human patients (n = 68, split into training and validation samples) with the unresponsive wakefulness syndrome and in patients in a minimally conscious state with high accuracy (random forest classifier, 87% accuracy, 96% sensitivity, and 50% specificity in the validation sample). Random EEG segments not locked to heartbeats were useful to predict unconsciousness/consciousness, but HERs were more accurate, indicating that HERs provide specific information on consciousness. HERs also led to more accurate classification than heart rate variability. HER-based consciousness scores correlate with glucose metabolism in the default-mode network node located in the right superior temporal sulcus, as well as with the right ventral occipitotemporal cortex. These results were obtained when consciousness was inferred from brain glucose met`abolism measured with positron emission topography. HERs reflected the consciousness diagnosis based on brain metabolism better than the consciousness diagnosis based on behavior (Coma Recovery Scale-Revised, 77% validation accuracy). HERs thus seem to capture a capacity for consciousness that does not necessarily translate into intentional overt behavior. These results confirm the role of HERs in consciousness, offer new leads for future bedside testing, and highlight the importance of defining consciousness and its neural mechanisms independently from behavior.

Preservation of Brain Activity in Unresponsive Patients Identifies MCS Star.

OBJECTIVE: Brain-injured patients who are unresponsive at the bedside (ie, vegetative state/unresponsive wakefulness syndrome - VS/UWS) may present brain activity similar to patients in minimally conscious state (MCS). This peculiar condition has been termed "non-behavioural MCS" or "MCS*". In the present study we aimed to investigate the proportion and underlying brain characteristics of patients in MCS*. METHODS: Brain 18 F-fluorodeoxyglucose Positron Emission Tomography (FDG-PET) was acquired on 135 brain-injured patients diagnosed in prolonged VS/UWS (n = 48) or MCS (n = 87). From an existing database, relative metabolic preservation in the fronto-parietal network (measured with standardized uptake value) was visually inspected by three experts. Patients with hypometabolism of the fronto-parietal network were labelled "VS/UWS", while its (partial) preservation either confirmed the behavioural diagnosis of "MCS" or, in absence of behavioural signs of consciousness, suggested a diagnosis of "MCS*". Clinical outcome at 1-year follow-up, functional connectivity, grey matter atrophy, and regional brain metabolic patterns were investigated in the three groups (VS/UWS, MCS* and MCS). RESULTS: 67% of behavioural VS/UWS presented a partial preservation of brain metabolism (ie, MCS*). Compared to VS/UWS patients, MCS* patients demonstrated a better outcome, global functional connectivity and grey matter preservation more compatible with the diagnosis of MCS. MCS* patients presented lower brain metabolism mostly in the posterior brain regions compared to MCS patients. INTERPRETATION: MCS* is a frequent phenomenon that is associated with better outcome and better brain preservation than the diagnosis of VS/UWS. Complementary exams should be provided to all unresponsive patients before taking medical decisions. ANN NEUROL 2021;90:89-100.

Perturbations in dynamical models of whole-brain activity dissociate between the level and stability of consciousness.

Consciousness transiently fades away during deep sleep, more stably under anesthesia, and sometimes permanently due to brain injury. The development of an index to quantify the level of consciousness across these different states is regarded as a key problem both in basic and clinical neuroscience. We argue that this problem is ill-defined since such an index would not exhaust all the relevant information about a given state of consciousness. While the level of consciousness can be taken to describe the actual brain state, a complete characterization should also include its potential behavior against external perturbations. We developed and analyzed whole-brain computational models to show that the stability of conscious states provides information complementary to their similarity to conscious wakefulness. Our work leads to a novel methodological framework to sort out different brain states by their stability and reversibility, and illustrates its usefulness to dissociate between physiological (sleep), pathological (brain-injured patients), and pharmacologically-induced (anesthesia) loss of consciousness.

Sleep and Circadian Disturbance in Disorders of Consciousness: Current Methods and the Way towards Clinical Implementation.

The investigation of sleep in disorders of consciousness (DoC) has shown promising diagnostic and prognostic results. However, the methods employed in this field of research are diverse. This leads to confusion in the way forward for both scientific and clinical purposes. We review the literature that has investigated sleep in DoC patients and specifically outline the methodologies used next to the presented results. We highlight what knowledge we currently have and where increased efforts are needed before further clinical implementation. Specifically, the review shows that successful methods may employ a two-stage approach to sleep scoring, where one is the application of loosened standard criteria and the other a more general factor describing closeness of the electroencephalography to a healthy pattern, including a score that describes the extent to which sleep scoring criteria can be applied. This should be performed as part of a multimodal approach that also includes investigations of eye-opening/closure and that of circadian (24-hour) rhythmicity. Taken together, this puts the most promising methodologies in the field together for a comprehensive investigation. Large-scale approaches, incorporating multiple modalities and looking at individual variation, are now needed to advance our understanding of sleep in DoC and its role in diagnosis, treatment, and recovery.

Indicators and criteria of consciousness: ethical implications for the care of behaviourally unresponsive patients.

BACKGROUND: Assessing consciousness in other subjects, particularly in non-verbal and behaviourally disabled subjects (e.g., patients with disorders of consciousness), is notoriously challenging but increasingly urgent. The high rate of misdiagnosis among disorders of consciousness raises the need for new perspectives in order to inspire new technical and clinical approaches. MAIN BODY: We take as a starting point a recently introduced list of operational indicators of consciousness that facilitates its recognition in challenging cases like non-human animals and Artificial Intelligence to explore their relevance to disorders of consciousness and their potential ethical impact on the diagnosis and healthcare of relevant patients. Indicators of consciousness mean particular capacities that can be deduced from observing the behaviour or cognitive performance of the subject in question (or from neural correlates of such performance) and that do not define a hard threshold in deciding about the presence of consciousness, but can be used to infer a graded measure based on the consistency amongst the different indicators. The indicators of consciousness under consideration offer a potential useful strategy for identifying and assessing residual consciousness in patients with disorders of consciousness, setting the theoretical stage for an operationalization and quantification of relevant brain activity. CONCLUSIONS: Our heuristic analysis supports the conclusion that the application of the identified indicators of consciousness to its disorders will likely inspire new strategies for assessing three very urgent issues: the misdiagnosis of disorders of consciousness; the need for a gold standard in detecting consciousness and diagnosing its disorders; and the need for a refined taxonomy of disorders of consciousness.

Regional brain volumetry and brain function in severely brain-injured patients.

OBJECTIVE: The relationship between residual brain tissue in patients with disorders of consciousness (DOC) and the clinical condition is unclear. This observational study aimed to quantify gray (GM) and white matter (WM) atrophy in states of (altered) consciousness. METHODS: Structural T1-weighted magnetic resonance images were processed for 102 severely brain-injured and 52 healthy subjects. Regional brain volume was quantified for 158 (sub)cortical regions using Freesurfer. The relationship between regional brain volume and clinical characteristics of patients with DOC and conscious brain-injured patients was assessed using a linear mixed-effects model. Classification of patients with unresponsive wakefulness syndrome (UWS) and minimally conscious state (MCS) using regional volumetric information was performed and compared to classification using cerebral glucose uptake from fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography. For validation, the T1-based classifier was tested on independent datasets. RESULTS: Patients were characterized by smaller regional brain volumes than healthy subjects. Atrophy occurred faster in UWS compared to MCS (GM) and conscious (GM and WM) patients. Classification was successful (misclassification with leave-one-out cross-validation between 2% and 13%) and generalized to the independent data set with an area under the receiver operator curve of 79% (95% confidence interval [CI; 67-91.5]) for GM and 70% (95% CI [55.6-85.4]) for WM. INTERPRETATION: Brain volumetry at the single-subject level reveals that regions in the default mode network and subcortical gray matter regions, as well as white matter regions involved in long range connectivity, are most important to distinguish levels of consciousness. Our findings suggest that changes of brain structure provide information in addition to the assessment of functional neuroimaging and thus should be evaluated as well. Ann Neurol 2018;83:842-853.

Robust EEG-based cross-site and cross-protocol classification of states of consciousness.

Determining the state of consciousness in patients with disorders of consciousness is a challenging practical and theoretical problem. Recent findings suggest that multiple markers of brain activity extracted from the EEG may index the state of consciousness in the human brain. Furthermore, machine learning has been found to optimize their capacity to discriminate different states of consciousness in clinical practice. However, it is unknown how dependable these EEG markers are in the face of signal variability because of different EEG configurations, EEG protocols and subpopulations from different centres encountered in practice. In this study we analysed 327 recordings of patients with disorders of consciousness (148 unresponsive wakefulness syndrome and 179 minimally conscious state) and 66 healthy controls obtained in two independent research centres (Paris Pitié-Salpêtrière and Liège). We first show that a non-parametric classifier based on ensembles of decision trees provides robust out-of-sample performance on unseen data with a predictive area under the curve (AUC) of ~0.77 that was only marginally affected when using alternative EEG configurations (different numbers and positions of sensors, numbers of epochs, average AUC = 0.750 ± 0.014). In a second step, we observed that classifiers based on multiple as well as single EEG features generalize to recordings obtained from different patient cohorts, EEG protocols and different centres. However, the multivariate model always performed best with a predictive AUC of 0.73 for generalization from Paris 1 to Paris 2 datasets, and an AUC of 0.78 from Paris to Liège datasets. Using simulations, we subsequently demonstrate that multivariate pattern classification has a decisive performance advantage over univariate classification as the stability of EEG features decreases, as different EEG configurations are used for feature-extraction or as noise is added. Moreover, we show that the generalization performance from Paris to Liège remains stable even if up to 20% of the diagnostic labels are randomly flipped. Finally, consistent with recent literature, analysis of the learned decision rules of our classifier suggested that markers related to dynamic fluctuations in theta and alpha frequency bands carried independent information and were most influential. Our findings demonstrate that EEG markers of consciousness can be reliably, economically and automatically identified with machine learning in various clinical and acquisition contexts.

A systematic analysis of distressing near-death experience accounts.

Near-death experiences (NDEs) are usually associated with positive affect, however, a small proportion are considered distressing. We aimed to look into the proportion of distressing NDEs in a sample of NDE narratives, categorise distressing narratives according to Greyson and Bush's classification (inverse, void or hellish), and compare distressing and "classical" NDEs. Participants wrote down their experience, completed the Memory Characteristics Questionnaire (assessing the phenomenology of memories) and the Greyson scale (characterising content of NDEs). The proportion of suicidal attempts, content and intensity of distressing and classical NDEs were compared using frequentist and Bayesian statistics. Distressing NDEs represent 14% of our sample (n = 123). We identified 8 inverse, 8 hellish and 1 void accounts. The proportion of suicide survivors is higher in distressing NDEs as compared to classical ones. Finally, memories of distressing NDEs appear as phenomenologically detailed as classical ones. Distressing NDEs deserve careful consideration to ensure their integration into experiencers' identity.

Diagnostic accuracy of the CRS-R index in patients with disorders of consciousness.

Objective: To obtain a CRS-R index suitable for diagnosis of patients with disorders of consciousness (DOC) and compare it to other CRS-R based scores to evaluate its potential for clinics and research. Design: We evaluated the diagnostic accuracy of several CRS-R-based scores in 124 patients with DOC. ROC analysis of the CRS-R total score, the Rasch-based CRS-R score, CRS-R-MS and the CRS-R index evaluated the diagnostic accuracy for patients with the Unresponsive Wakefulness Syndrome (UWS) and Minimally Conscious State (MCS). Correlations were computed between the CRS-R-MS, CRS-R index, the Rasch-based score and the CRS-R total score. Results: Both the CRS-R-MS and CRS-R index ranged from 0 to 100, with a cut-off of 8.315 that perfectly distinguishes between patients with UWS and MCS. The CRS-R total score and Rasch-based score did not provide a cut-off score for patients with UWS and MCS. The proposed CRS-R index correlated with the CRS-R total score, Rasch-based score and the CRS-R-MS. Conclusion: The CRS-R index is reliable to diagnose patients with UWS and MCS and can be used in compliance with the CRS-R scoring guidelines. The obtained index offers the opportunity to improve the interpretation of clinical assessment and can be used in (longitudinal) research protocols. Abbreviations: CRS-R: Coma Recovery Scale-Revised; CRS-R-MS: Coma Recovery Scale-Revised Modified Score; DOC: Disorders of Consciousness; MCS: Minimally Conscious State; UWS: Unresponsive Wakefulness Syndrome; ROC: Receiver Operating Characteristic; AUC: Area Under the Curve; IRT: Item Response Theory.

Multifaceted brain networks reconfiguration in disorders of consciousness uncovered by co-activation patterns.

INTRODUCTION: Given that recent research has shown that functional connectivity is not a static phenomenon, we aim to investigate the dynamic properties of the default mode network's (DMN) connectivity in patients with disorders of consciousness. METHODS: Resting-state fMRI volumes of a convenience sample of 17 patients in unresponsive wakefulness syndrome (UWS) and controls were reduced to a spatiotemporal point process by selecting critical time points in the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC). Spatial clustering was performed on the extracted PCC time frames to obtain 8 different co-activation patterns (CAPs). We investigated spatial connectivity patterns positively and negatively correlated with PCC using both CAPs and standard stationary method. We calculated CAPs occurrences and the total number of frames. RESULTS: Compared to controls, patients showed (i) decreased within-network positive correlations and between-network negative correlations, (ii) emergence of "pathological" within-network negative correlations and between-network positive correlations (better defined with CAPs), and (iii) "pathological" increases in within-network positive correlations and between-network negative correlations (only detectable using CAPs). Patients showed decreased occurrence of DMN-like CAPs (1-2) compared to controls. No between-group differences were observed in the total number of frames CONCLUSION: CAPs reveal at a more fine-grained level the multifaceted spatial connectivity reconfiguration following the DMN disruption in UWS patients, which is more complex than previously thought and suggests alternative anatomical substrates for consciousness. BOLD fluctuations do not seem to differ between patients and controls, suggesting that BOLD response represents an intrinsic feature of the signal, and therefore that spatial configuration is more important for consciousness than BOLD activation itself. Hum Brain Mapp 39:89-103, 2018. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.