Motor Imagery BCI with Auditory Feedback as a Mechanism for Assessment and Communication in Disorders of Consciousness

Patients with disorders of consciousness (DoC) are difficult to assess both because of their unpredictable fluctuation of awareness and the current adopted scales, which have a poor prognostic reliability [1]. Individuals who are in a minimally conscious state (MCS) or vegetative state (VS), or with unresponsive wakefulness syndrome (UWS), may be incapable of providing volitional overt motor responses. This has resulted in a rate of 43% of patients who were diagnosed as having VS being reclassified as MCS after further assessment.