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    Home > Active Ingredient News > Drugs Articles > Can the "plant man" be awakened?

    Can the "plant man" be awakened?

    • Last Update: 2021-03-01
    • Source: Internet
    • Author: User
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    "plant man" who sleeps awake hear the call of his loved ones? How to judge scientifically and objectively whether "plant man" still has consciousness? Recently, Wang Liping research team of the Center for Brain Science and Intelligent Technology Innovation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in collaboration with Mao Ying and Wu Xuehai of Neurosurgery at Huashan Hospital affiliated with Fudan University, gave the answer.According to incomplete statistics, every year nearly 100,000 patients in China due to brain trauma, stroke, ischemic ischemic encephalopathy and other diseases into a coma, and then into a long-term state of consciousness disorder, that is, to become the traditional sense of "plant people." Wang Liping said that the current clinical status appraisal of such patients mainly depends on the observation and scale score of experienced doctors, has a certain degree of subjectivity, misdiagnosis rate as high as 40%. In recent years, some researchers have used MRI technology to record patients' brain activity and speculate on the degree of consciousness disorder, but there is still some room for improvement in applicability, ease of use and accuracy.This study combined with machine learning methods to carry out exploratory research on language processing-related neural symptoms in patients with consciousness disorders, successfully realized the diagnosis and rehabilitation prediction of the state of consciousness of patients, and provided a new way of thinking for the clinical diagnosis and treatment of patients with consciousness disorders. The results were published online in Nature -Neuroscience.According to Wang, the results are based on a previous finding by researcher Ding Wei of Zhejiang University that when healthy people listen to a sequence of Chinese speech rendered at a certain frequency, the brain responds to the rhythmic neuro oscillation parallel characterization sequence at different levels of language structure - words, words, phrases or sentences. On this basis, the team hypothesized that the residual consciousness level of patients with consciousness disorders may be related to the processing depth of the hierarchical structure in the language sequence, especially in the neural characterization of the upper-level language structure.By designing three sequences of languages containing different levels, the team recorded the electrical activity of "plant man" patients when they were stimulated by speech, and compared them with healthy people.The results showed that both the patient group and the healthy subject group showed significant neural response to the "word" hierarchy, but only the brain and electrical activity of the healthy subject group showed significant "tracking" of the "word" and "sentence" structure.Dr. Gui Peng, co-lead author of the study, said that the brain "tracks" the structure of words and sentences other than the word, indicating that people may need a higher level of consciousness to "move their brains", and in clinical studies, the team found 15 "plant people" who would "move their brains", and 6 people really recovered after 100 days of electroencephalic recording.“ The results of this study provide a more objective and universal evaluation index of brain consciousness level, which will be widely used in a series of brain state assessments related to consciousness level, such as coma, sleep, anesthesia, etc. Wang Liping said that in the future, the research team will further optimize the language-electro-brain detection model, improve the clinical effect, adaptation and automation of the results of the study, hoping to provide experimental basis and theoretical basis for the study of the neural mechanisms of consciousness disorders, neurological symptoms of consciousness activities and consciousness disorders patients. (
    China Youth Daily)
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