With very few treatments available, post-comatose disorders of consciousness (DoC) pose one of the hardest challenges in modern neurology. Following promising clinical trial results in psychiatry, and a deepening understanding of their brain mechanisms, psychedelics have been suggested as a novel therapeutic drug for DoC patients, given that they increase the entropy or complexity of...
Clinical NeurophysiologyMay 1, 2025Cecilia Catania, Marco Mancuso, Adolfo Mazzeo et al.3 citations
Previous neuroimaging studies indicate complex network alterations in psychogenic non-epileptic seizures (PNES) patients, but brain activity modifications occurring during PNES remain unexplored. This study aimed to analyze EEG microstate metrics in PNES patients both during events and resting state to investigate the neurophysiological changes underlying these dissociative events. We recruited...
Entropy analysis can quantify the dynamic states of the brain and reflect its information processing capacity. Nitrous oxide has shown rapid antidepressant effects in treatment-resistant depression (TRD) patients, but its biomarkers are not yet established. We recruited 44 TRD patients and randomly assigned them to two groups: one received a 1-hour nitrous oxide inhalation treatment, while the...
Objective: Ketamine is an anesthetic drug associated with dissociation. Decreased electroencephalogram alpha (8 to 13 Hz) and low-beta (13 to 20 Hz) oscillation power have been associated with ketamine-induced dissociation. We aimed to characterize surface electroencephalogram signatures that may serve as biomarkers for dissociation. Methods: We analyzed data from a single-site, open-label,...
OBJECTIVE: Ketamine has been shown to be effective in treatment of episodes of major depressive disorder (MDD). This controlled study aimed to analyse the predictive and discriminative power of heart rate (HR) and heart rate variability (HRV) for ketamine treatment in MDD. METHODS: In 51 patients, HR and HRV were assessed at baseline before and during ketamine infusion and 24 hours post...
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clinph.2019.11.011 1388-2457/ 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of In This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativ Cognitive trance is defined as a volitional, purposeful and selfinduced modified state of consciousness (inherited from shamanic traditional practice), characterized by lucid but narrowed awareness of...
To quantify the effects of nitrous oxide (N(2)O) gas on electroencephalogram (EEG) topography in healthy male participants. Healthy male participants were administered 20% (n=8) or 40% (n=8) N(2)O while having high-density (modified 10-20) noise minimized EEG recordings. Nitrous oxide was found to produce clear reductions in resting total power, particularly at frontal-vertex sites. These...
ObjectiveThere is a growing scientific interest in mindfulness meditation (MM), yet its underlying neurophysiological mechanism is still uncertain. We investigated whether MM affects self-referential processing, associated with default mode network (DMN), either as short (state) - or long-term (trait) effects.MethodsThree levels of MM expertise were compared with controls (n=12 each) by...
ObjectiveThe choice of electroencephalograph (EEG) reference is a critical issue for the study of brain activity. The present study addressed the use of the infinity reference obtained by the reference electrode standardisation technique (REST) in the study of EEG default mode network (DMN).MethodsA total of 100 randomly positioned source configurations, each consisting of two dipoles with...
(1) To examine the validity of comparing the phase of broad-band signals. (2) To measure phase synchrony over the whole head, at a variety of frequencies. The concept of broad band phase is investigated (a) by visual comparison of the time series of two channels of filtered data with the time series of the spatial analytic phase difference (SAPD) between the two channels and (b) using...
Marijuana abuse is associated with neurological changes including increases in frontal EEG alpha during abstinence. Research is needed to assess to what extent these EEG patterns are indicative of cerebral perfusion deficits. We recorded the resting eyes closed EEG of 75 abstinent marijuana users and 33 control subjects. Fifty-six marijuana users used marijuana for less than eight years and 19...
Cannabis use often induces subjective distortions of perception. However, little work has been done examining the electroencephalographic (EEG) correlates of early sensory processing in cannabis users. The present study therefore examined visual function in cannabis users as assessed via the steady state visual evoked potential. (SSVEP). SSVEPs were examined in current cannabis users (n = 17;...
Many complex and interesting phenomena in nature are due to nonlinear phenomena. The theory of nonlinear dynamical systems, also called 'chaos theory', has now progressed to a stage, where it becomes possible to study self-organization and pattern formation in the complex neuronal networks of the brain. One approach to nonlinear time series analysis consists of reconstructing, from time series...