ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Neurosci.
Sec. Brain Imaging Methods
Volume 19 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fnins.2025.1604173
Assessing consciousness in patients with locked-in syndrome using their EEG
Provisionally accepted
- Leipzig University, Leipzig, Germany
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Research indicates that locked-in syndrome (LIS) patients retain both consciousness and cognitive functions, despite their inability to perform voluntary muscle movements or communicate.Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) provide a means for these patients to communicate, which is crucial, as the ability to interact with their environment has been shown to significantly enhance their well-being and quality of life. This paper presents an innovative approach to analysing electroencephalogram (EEG) data from four LIS patients to assess their consciousness levels, referred to as normalised consciousness levels (NCL) in this study. This method has already shown promising results in one CLIS patient and several patients with disorders of consciousness (DoC). The consciousness levels derived from this approach aim to improve our understanding of the patients' condition, which is vital in order to build effective communication systems. By accurately assessing consciousness, this research aims to improve diagnosis in addition to determining the optimal time to initiate communication with these non-communicative patients.It is important to note that consciousness is a complex and difficult concept to define. In this study, the term "consciousness level" does not refer to a medical definition. Instead, it represents a scale of NCL values ranging from 0 to 1 representing the likelihood of the patient being fully conscious (1) or not (0).
Keywords: Brain-computer interface, complete locked-in syndrome, Complexity, connectivity, Consciousness, EEG, Frequency, Soft clustering
Received: 01 Apr 2025; Accepted: 18 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Adama and Bogdan. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Sophie Adama, Leipzig University, Leipzig, Germany
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