Wannez Sarah, Vanhaudenhuyse Audrey, Laureys Steven, Brédart Serge
a GIGA Consciousness, Coma Science Group , University of Liège , Liège , Belgium.
b Neurology Department , Hospital University of Liège , Liège , Belgium.
Brain Inj. 2017;31(11):1429-1435. doi: 10.1080/02699052.2017.1376755. Epub 2017 Oct 5.
Visual pursuit should be tested with a mirror in patients with disorders of consciousness. This stimulus was indeed more efficient than a person or an object, and the auto-referential aspect was supposed to be the key feature. The present study tested the hypothesis that the mirror was more efficient because of its self-aspect.
The mirror was compared (1) to the patient's picture and to the picture of a famous face, in 22 patients in minimally conscious state and (2) to the patient's picture and a fake mirror, which had dynamical and bright aspects of the mirror, without reflecting the face, in 26 other patients in minimally conscious state.
The mirror was more efficient than the patient's picture, which was not statistically different from the famous face. The second part of the study confirmed the statistical difference between the mirror and the picture. However, the fake mirror was neither statistically different from the mirror nor from the picture.
Although our results suggest that the hypothesis proposed by previous studies was partly wrong, they confirm that the mirror is the best stimulus to use when assessing visual pursuit.
对于意识障碍患者，应使用镜子来测试视觉追踪能力。这种刺激确实比人物或物体更有效，并且自我参照方面被认为是关键特征。本研究检验了镜子因其自我方面而更有效的假设。
（1）在22例处于最低意识状态的患者中，将镜子与患者的照片以及一张名人脸的照片进行比较；（2）在另外26例处于最低意识状态的患者中，将镜子与患者的照片以及一个假镜子进行比较，该假镜子具有镜子的动态和明亮特征，但不反射面部。
镜子比患者的照片更有效，而患者的照片与名人脸的照片在统计学上无差异。研究的第二部分证实了镜子与照片之间的统计学差异。然而，假镜子与镜子以及照片在统计学上均无差异。
尽管我们的结果表明先前研究提出的假设部分错误，但它们证实了在评估视觉追踪时镜子是最佳的刺激物。
