Prediction of consciousness recovery in patients with disorder of consciousness using Brain-computer Interface

The aim of this study is to determine the potential prognostic value of using Brain-computer Interface (BCI) to identify patients with disorder of consciousness (DOC), who show potential for recovery. A retrospective study involved 51 patients with DOC were conducted. Each patient conducted in a BCI experiment to detect awareness and received a 3-months follow-up. The BCI accuracies were correlated to patient outcomes according to the Coma Recovery Scale Revised (CRS-R). The statistical tests showed that patients with significant accuracies higher than the chance level showed greater improvement in CRS-R scores after 3 months compared to patients without significant accuracies. The sensitivity and specificity of the BCI accuracies in determining individual's consciousness recovery after 3 months are 67.7% and 90% respectively. A highly significant relationship between BCI accuracies and subsequent recovery was thus found. The BCI is suggested as an important tool to assess information-processing capacities that can predict the likelihood of recovery in patients with disorder of consciousness.