ArticleCerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991)2023
Beyond alpha power: EEG spatial and spectral gradients robustly stratify disorders of consciousness.
Article in Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991), 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 30 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
30 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- A methodological guideline for consciousness assessment via neural electrophysiological activity.Military Medical Research · 2025Guideline
- A Systematic Review of Aperiodic Neural Activity in Clinical Investigations.The European journal of neuroscience · 2025Pooled it
- Thermodynamics of consciousness: Non-equilibrium brain dynamics track conscious states.Cell reports · 2026Article
- Autonomic and neural responses to varying transcutaneous cervical electrical stimulation parameters.Bioelectronic medicine · 2026Article
- Multimodal multicentre investigation of diagnostic and prognostic markers in disorders of consciousness.Brain : a journal of neurology · 2026Article
- EEG hemispheric asymmetry and behavioral responsiveness following rTMS in unresponsive wakefulness syndrome: an exploratory study.Journal of neuroengineering and rehabilitation · 2026Article
- Towards an informational account of interpersonal coordination.Nature reviews. Neuroscience · 2026Review
- Clinical Electroencephalography for Anesthesiologists and Intensivists: Part 2-Physiologic Signatures and Active Management.Anesthesiology · 2025Review
- Characterizing consciousness states: EEG microstate dynamics in patients with disorders of consciousness during naturalistic movie-viewing.Medical & biological engineering & computing · 2025Article
- Individual trajectories for recovery of neocortical activity in disorders of consciousness.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- Hemispherotomy leads to persistent sleep-like slow waves in the isolated cortex of awake humans.PLoS biology · 2025Article
- The role of etiology in the identification of clinical markers of consciousness: comparing EEG alpha power, complexity, and spectral exponent.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2025Article
- Wake EEG oscillation dynamics reflect both sleep pressure and brain maturation across childhood and adolescence.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- EEG Response to Sedation Interruption Complements Behavioral Assessment After Severe Brain Injury.Annals of clinical and translational neurology · 2025Article
- [Research on the relationship between resting-state spontaneous electroencephalography and task-evoked electroencephalography].Sheng wu yi xue gong cheng xue za zhi = Journal of biomedical engineering = Shengwu yixue gongchengxue zazhi · 2025Review
- The Neural Correlates of Consciousness: A Spectral Exponent Approach to Diagnosing Disorders of Consciousness.Brain sciences · 2025Article
- Article
- Altered periodic and aperiodic activities in patients with disorders of consciousness.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2025Article
- EEG changes associated with hallucinations caused by Charles Bonnet Syndrome.Frontiers in neurology · 2025Article
- EEG spectral attractors identify a geometric core of brain dynamics.Patterns (New York, N.Y.) · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
17 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
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.
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