ObjectiveTo explore the application effect of standardized management on video-electroencephalogram (VEEG) monitoring.MethodsIn January 2018, a multidisciplinary standardized management team composed with doctors, technicians, and nurses was established. The standardized management plan for VEEG monitoring from outpatient, pre-hospital appointment, hospitalization and post-discharge follow-up was developed; the special quilt for epilepsy patients was designed and customized, braided for the patient instead of shaving head, standardized the work flow of the staff, standardized the health education of the patients and their families, and standardized the quality control of the implementation process. The standardized managemen effect carried out from January to December 2018 (after standardized managemen) was compared with the management effect from January to December 2017 (before standardized managemen).ResultsAfter standardized management, the average waiting time of patients decreased from (2.08±1.13) hours to (0.53±0.21) hours, and the average hospitalization days decreased from (6.63±2.54) days to (6.14±2.17) days. The pass rate of patient preparation increased from 63.14% to 90.09%. The capture rate of seizure onset increased from 73.37% to 97.08%. The accuracy of the record increased from 33.12% to 94.10%, the doctor’s satisfaction increased from 76.34±29.53 to 97.99±9.27, and the patient’s satisfaction increased from 90.04±18.97 to 99.03±6.51. The difference was statistically significant (P<0.05).ConclusionStandardization management is conducive to ensuring the homogeneity of clinical medical care, reducing the average waiting time and the average hospitalization days, improving the capture rate and accuracy of seizures, ensuring the quality of medical care and improving patient’s satisfaction.
The incidence of tinnitus is very high, which can affect the patient’s attention, emotion and sleep, and even cause serious psychological distress and suicidal tendency. Currently, there is no uniform and objective method for tinnitus detection and therapy, and the mechanism of tinnitus is still unclear. In this study, we first collected the resting state electroencephalogram (EEG) data of tinnitus patients and healthy subjects. Then the power spectrum topology diagrams were compared of in the band of δ (0.5–3 Hz), θ (4–7 Hz), α (8–13 Hz), β (14–30 Hz) and γ (31–50 Hz) to explore the central mechanism of tinnitus. A total of 16 tinnitus patients and 16 healthy subjects were recruited to participate in the experiment. The results of resting state EEG experiments found that the spectrum power value of tinnitus patients was higher than that of healthy subjects in all concerned frequency bands. The t-test results showed that the significant difference areas were mainly concentrated in the right temporal lobe of the θ and α band, and the temporal lobe, parietal lobe and forehead area of the β and γ band. In addition, we designed an attention-related task experiment to further study the relationship between tinnitus and attention. The results showed that the classification accuracy of tinnitus patients was significantly lower than that of healthy subjects, and the highest classification accuracies were 80.21% and 88.75%, respectively. The experimental results indicate that tinnitus may cause the decrease of patients’ attention.
Gelastic seizure (GS) is a type of epilepsy characterized primarily by inappropriate bursts of laughter, with or without other epileptic events. Based on the timing of symptoms, the presence of emotional changes, and disturbances of consciousness, GS is classified into simple and complex types. The generation of laughter involves two major neural pathways: the emotional pathway and the volitional pathway. The neural network involved in GS includes structures such as the frontal lobe, insula, cingulate gyrus, temporal lobe, and brainstem.The most common cause of GS is a hypothalamic hamartoma, and stereotactic electroencephalography can record discharges from the lesion itself. Surgical removal of the hypothalamic hamartoma can result in immediate cessation of GS in the majority of patients, while some may experience partial improvement with persistent epileptic-like discharges detectable on scalp electroencephalography (EEG). Early surgical intervention may improve prognosis.In cases of non-hypothalamic origin of GS with no apparent imaging abnormalities, focal discharges are often observed on EEG and these cases respond well to antiepileptic drugs. Conversely, patients with structural abnormalities suggested by imaging studies tend to have multifocal discharges and a poorer response to medication. In a small subset of medically refractory non-hypothalamic GS, surgical intervention can effectively control symptoms.This article provides a comprehensive review of the etiology, neural networks involved, EEG characteristics, and treatment options for GS, with the goal of improving understanding of this relatively rare type of epileptic seizure.
Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is an emerging non-invasive brain stimulation technique. However, the rehabilitation effect of tDCS on stroke disease is unclear. In this paper, based on electroencephalogram (EEG) and complex network analysis methods, the effect of tDCS on brain function network of stroke patients during rehabilitation was investigated. The resting state EEG signals of 31 stroke rehabilitation patients were collected and divided into stimulation group (16 cases) and control group (15 cases). The Pearson correlation coefficients were calculated between the channels, brain functional network of two groups were constructed before and after stimulation, and five characteristic parameters were analyzed and compared such as node degree, clustering coefficient, characteristic path length, global efficiency, and small world attribute. The results showed that node degree, clustering coefficient, global efficiency, and small world attributes of brain functional network in the tDCS group were significantly increased, characteristic path length was significantly reduced, and the difference was statistically significant (P < 0.05). It indicates that tDCS can improve the brain function network of stroke patients in rehabilitation period, and may provide theory and experimental basis for the application of tDCS in stroke rehabilitation treatment.
Purpose To analyze the clinical characteristicsand prognostic factors of Status epilepticus (SE) in children. Methods The clinical data of 33 children with SE treated in Jinan Central Hospital Affiliated of Shandong University from January 2014 to June 2021 were collected, and their clinical characteristics were analyzed. Then, according to Glasgow prognosis scale, the children were divided into good prognosis group (n=20) and poor prognosis group (n=13). The age of first attack, duration of attack, type of attack and SE classification, EEG, cranial imaging and etiology were used to analyze the influencing factors of SE prognosis. Results 75.7% were 0 ~ 6 years old in the age of first attack, and 29 cases of convulsive status epilepticus accounted for 87.9% in the classification of seizure types. There were significant differences in age of first attack, duration of attack, EEG, history of mental retardation and etiology between the two groups (P<0.05); Logistic regression analysis showed that the age of first attack, duration of attack, history of mental retardation and EEG were independent factors affecting the prognosis. Conclusion Low age, especially ≤ 6 years old, is the high incidence of SE in children at first attack. Most children are symptomatic and have obvious incentives. Convulsive SE is the main type of SE in children. The age of first onset, duration of epilepsy, history of mental retardation, and EEG can affect the prognosis of SE.
Brain-computer interface (BCI) provides a direct communicating and controlling approach between the brain and surrounding environment, which attracts a wide range of interest in the fields of brain science and artificial intelligence. It is a core to decode the electroencephalogram (EEG) feature in the BCI system. The decoding efficiency highly depends on the feature extraction and feature classification algorithms. In this paper, we first introduce the commonly-used EEG features in the BCI system. Then we introduce the basic classical algorithms and their advanced versions used in the BCI system. Finally, we present some new BCI algorithms proposed in recent years. We hope this paper can spark fresh thinking for the research and development of high-performance BCI system.
Background music has been increasingly affecting people’s lives. The research on the influence of background music on working memory has become a hot topic in brain science. In this paper, an improved electroencephalography (EEG) experiment based on n-back paradigm was designed. Fifteen university students without musical training were randomly selected to participate in the experiment, and their behavioral data and the EEG data were collected synchronously in order to explore the influence of different types of background music on spatial positioning cognition working memory. The exact low-resolution brain tomography algorithm (eLORETA) was applied to localize the EEG sources and the cross-correlation method was used to construct the cortical brain function networks based on the EEG source signals. Then the characteristics of the networks under different conditions were analyzed and compared to study the effects of background music on people’s working memory. The results showed that the difference of peak periods after stimulated by different types of background music were mainly distributed in the signals of occipital lobe and temporal lobe (P < 0.05). The analysis results showed that the brain connectivity under the condition with background music were stronger than those under the condition without music. The connectivities in the right occipital and temporal lobes under the condition of rock music were significantly higher than those under the condition of classical music. The node degrees, the betweenness centrality and the clustering coefficients under the condition without music were lower than those under the condition with background music. The node degrees and clustering coefficients under the condition of classical music were lower than those under the condition of rock music. It indicates that music stimulation increases the brain activity and has an impact on the working memory, and the effect of rock music is more remarkable than that of classical music. The behavioral data showed that the response accuracy in the state of no music, classical music and rock music were 86.09% ± 0.090%, 80.96% ± 0.960% and 79.36% ± 0.360%, respectively. We conclude that background music has a negative impact on the working memory, for it takes up the cognitive resources and reduces the cognitive ability of spatial location.
Using the computer to imitate the neural oscillations of the brain is of great significance for the analysis of brain functions. Thalamocortical neural mass model (TNMM) reflects the mechanisms of neural activities by establishing the relationships between the thalamus and the cortex, which contributes to the understanding of some specific cognitive functions of the brain and the neural oscillations of electroencephalogram (EEG) rhythms. With the increasing complexity and scale of neural mass model, the performance of conventional computer system can not achieve rapid and large-scale model simulation. In order to solve this problem, we proposed a computing method based on Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) hardware in this study. The Altera's DSP Builder module combined with MATLAB/Simulink was used to achieve the construction of complex neural mass model algorithm, which is transplanted to the FPGA hardware platform. This method takes full advantage of the ability of parallel computing of FPGA to realize fast simulation of large-scale and complex neural mass models, which provides new solutions and ideas for computer implementation of neural mass models.
As an emerging non-invasive brain stimulation technique, transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) has received increasing attention in the field of stroke disease rehabilitation. However, its efficacy needs to be further studied. The tDCS has three stimulation modes: bipolar-stimulation mode, anode-stimulation mode and cathode-stimulation mode. Nineteen stroke patients were included in this research (10 with left-hemisphere lesion and 9 with right). Resting electroencephalogram (EEG) signals were collected from subjects before and after bipolar-stimulation, anodal-stimulation, cathodal-stimulation, and pseudo-stimulation, with pseudo-stimulation serving as the control group. The changes of multi-scale intrinsic fuzzy entropy (MIFE) of EEG signals before and after stimulation were compared. The results revealed that MIFE was significantly greater in the frontal and central regions after bipolar-stimulation (P < 0.05), in the left central region after anodal-stimulation (P < 0.05), and in the frontal and right central regions after cathodal-stimulation (P < 0.05) in patients with left-hemisphere lesions. MIFE was significantly greater in the frontal, central and parieto-occipital joint regions after bipolar-stimulation (P < 0.05), in the left frontal and right central regions after anodal- stimulation (P < 0.05), and in the central and right occipital regions after cathodal-stimulation (P < 0.05) in patients with right-hemisphere lesions. However, the difference before and after pseudo-stimulation was not statistically significant (P > 0.05). The results of this paper showed that the bipolar stimulation pattern affected the largest range of brain areas, and it might provide a reference for the clinical study of rehabilitation after stroke.