Track language processing in non-reactive patients.

According to a paper published in nature neuroscience, assessing the depth of language processing in patients with disorders of consciousness, the state of human consciousness can be characterized by tracking the language processing activities of the brain.this finding may be used to predict the prognosis of unresponsive patients.previous studies have shown that brain signals can indicate loss of consciousness.functional magnetic resonance (MRI) studies have reported brain responses to natural language in unresponsive patients.however, electroencephalogram (EEG) is more sensitive to brain activity, can better assess language processing, and distinguish between disturbance of consciousness (such as unresponsive arousal syndrome, UWS) and minimum state of consciousness (MCS).Wang Liping from the Institute of neuroscience, Shanghai Academy of life sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Wu Xuehai, Fudan University, China, examined brain responses to speech sequences in 42 MCS patients, 36 UWS patients and 47 healthy controls.they recorded EEG responses at different language levels (words, phrases and sentences).the special case of language hierarchy and neural tracking | credit: Wang et al. The authors found that word processing was obvious in both patients and healthy controls, and phrase and sentence tracking was more obvious in MCS patients than in UWS patients.EEG data on sentence processing can be used to distinguish between MCS group, UWS group and control group.when dealing with phrases and sentences, MCS patients had higher levels of EEG activity of speech tracking response and cognitive network temporal dynamics than those of UWS patients, which may help to classify different groups of state of consciousness.the authors believe that the EEG based model can divide individuals into healthy controls, MCS patients and UWS patients with high accuracy, and can also predict the prognosis of patients.however, additional studies are needed to systematically compare the prediction accuracy of EEG data with current classification methods, and multiple EEG tests are required from the initial stage of coma to the subsequent recovery stage.© natureNature Neuroscience| DOI: 10.1038/s41593-020-0639-1