Predicting attentional focus: Heartbeat-evoked responses and brain dynamics during interoceptive and exteroceptive processing.

Attention shapes our consciousness content and perception by increasing the probability of becoming aware and/or better encoding a selection of the incoming inner or outer sensory world. Engaging interoceptive and exteroceptive attention should elicit distinctive neural responses to visceral and external stimuli and could be useful in detecting covert command-following in unresponsive patients. We designed a task to engage healthy participants' attention toward their heartbeats or auditory stimuli and investigated whether brain dynamics and the heartbeat-evoked potential (HEP) distinguished covert interoceptive-exteroceptive attention.

Participatory Development of an International Information Brochure on the Multimodal Assessment of Disorders of Consciousness.

Background: Disorders of consciousness (DoC) refers to a group of clinical conditions of altered consciousness. To improve their diagnosis and prognosis, multimodal assessment can be of great importance. Informal caregivers of people with DoC who are confronted with new technologies as such can benefit from interventions to expand their health literacy, i.

Restoring of Interhemispheric Symmetry in Patients With Stroke Following Bilateral or Unilateral Robot-Assisted Upper-Limb Rehabilitation: A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial.

Bilateral robotic rehabilitation has proven helpful in the recovery of upper limb motor function in patients with stroke, but its effects on the cortical reorganization mechanisms underlying recovery are still unclear. This pilot Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) aimed to evaluate the effects on the interhemispheric balance of unilateral or bilateral robotic treatments in patients with subacute stroke, using Quantitative Electroencephalography (qEEG). 19 patients with ischemic stroke underwent a 30-session upper limb neurorehabilitation intervention using a bilateral upper limb exoskeleton.

Italian translation and cultural adaptation of the Agitated Behavior Scale (ABS-I) in patients with acquired brain injuries.

Objective: The objective of this study was to produce a cross-cultural adaptation in Italian of the Agitated Behavior Scale (ABS), originally developed in English, as the first of two stages that also include cross-cultural validation and allow a clinical scale to be used in the proper setting such as rehabilitation units.

Methods: In order to adapt the ABS scale to a different cultural environment, five consecutive steps were performed: (1) forward translations (n = 8), (2) synthesis of the 8 forward translations to obtain a first shared italian version (ABS_I_trial), (3) back translations (n = 3), (4) creation of an expert committee to evaluate forward and back translations and finally (5) the cognitive debriefing.

Results: After the five steps, including forward translations and back translations, the process of committee verification and judgement and the evaluative step of cognitive debriefing, high comprehensibility of all items was found, resulting in an Italian translation version of ABS suitable for application in a clinical setting.

Dissociations between spontaneous electroencephalographic features and the perturbational complexity index in the minimally conscious state.

The analysis of spontaneous electroencephalogram (EEG) is a cornerstone in the assessment of patients with disorders of consciousness (DoC). Although preserved EEG patterns are highly suggestive of consciousness even in unresponsive patients, moderately or severely abnormal patterns are difficult to interpret. Indeed, growing evidence shows that consciousness can be present despite either large delta or reduced alpha activity in spontaneous EEG.