title: Resting state activity in patients with disorders of consciousness.
abstract: Recent advances in the study of spontaneous brain activity have demonstrated activity patterns that emerge with no task performance or sensory stimulation; these discoveries hold promise for the study of higher-order associative network functionality. Additionally, such advances are argued to be relevant in pathological states, such as disorders of consciousness (DOC), i.e., coma, vegetative and minimally conscious states. Recent studies on resting state activity in DOC, measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) techniques, show that functional connectivity is disrupted in the task-negative or the default mode network. However, the two main approaches employed in the analysis of resting state functional connectivity data (i.e., hypothesis-driven seed-voxel and data-driven independent component analysis) present multiple methodological difficulties, especially in non-collaborative DOC patients. Improvements in motion artifact removal and spatial normalization are needed before fMRI resting state data can be used as proper biomarkers in severe brain injury. However, we anticipate that such developments will boost clinical resting state fMRI studies, allowing for easy and fast acquisitions and ultimately improve the diagnosis and prognosis in the absence of DOC patients' active collaboration in data acquisition.
authors.affiliation: Coma Science Group, Cyclotron Research Center, University of Liège, Belgium. andrea.soddu@ulg.ac.be
authors.forename: Andrea
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Soddu
authors.forename: Audrey
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Vanhaudenhuyse
authors.forename: Athena
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Demertzi
authors.forename: Marie-Aurélie
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Bruno
authors.forename: Luaba
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Tshibanda
authors.forename: Haibo
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Di
authors.forename: Boly
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Mélanie
authors.forename: Michele
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Papa
authors.forename: Steven
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Laureys
authors.forename: Quentin
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Noirhomme
mesh_terms: D001921:Brain / Q000503:physiopathology*; D003128:Coma / Q000503:physiopathology; D003243:Consciousness; D003244:Consciousness Disorders / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D018458:Persistent Vegetative State / Q000503:physiopathology