Capturing the ghost in the machine: a process for development and validation of measures of phenomenal consciousness in delirium.

Background: Delirium has conventionally been considered a disorder of consciousness. Alertness and arousal are used as surrogates in clinical practice but are insufficient for the purposes of a more dimensional assessment of consciousness. We present a process of development and validation of candidate measures of phenomenal consciousness that could be applied to the diagnosis of delirium.

Machine learning and clinical neurophysiology.

Clinical neurophysiology constructs a wealth of dynamic information pertaining to the integrity and function of both central and peripheral nervous systems. As with many technological fields, there has been an explosion of data in neurophysiology over recent years, and this requires considerable analysis by experts. Computational algorithms and especially advances in machine learning (ML) have the ability to assist with this task and potentially reveal hidden insights.

Genotype, extrapyramidal features, and severity of variant ataxia-telangiectasia.

Objective: Variant ataxia-telangiectasia is caused by mutations that allow some retained ataxia telangiectasia-mutated (ATM) kinase activity. Here, we describe the clinical features of the largest established cohort of individuals with variant ataxia-telangiectasia and explore genotype-phenotype correlations.

Methods: Cross-sectional data were collected retrospectively.

Measuring TMS stimulus/response characteristics from both hemispheres simultaneously for proximal and distal upper limb muscles.

The different types of magnetic stimulators available commercially permit preferential activation of an area of cortex confined to one hemisphere. Stimulating bilaterally may be a desirable means, however, of obtaining information from each hemisphere simultaneously at rest or during a motor task. The aims of this study were to validate and optimize this method by comparing the biophysical and the physiologic features of biphasic with monophasic stimulation from a circular coil.

Acquisition and expression of proximal and distal upper limb stimulus-response curves to transcranial magnetic stimulation.

Motor cortex stimulus-response (S/R) curves are an indication of cortical excitability and are of relevance to topographical mapping. The aims of this study were to compare two different methods of collecting data to construct a S/R curve for transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) in the upper limbs, to identify reliable summary statistics for the S/R curve, and to determine whether S/R curves predicted motor threshold. Motor evoked potentials (MEP) were obtained from biceps brachii (BB) and abductor pollicis brevis (APB) muscles at rest with a circular coil centered at the vertex.