Institute of Medical Psychology and Behavioral Neurobiology, University of Tubingen, Tubingen, Germany; Department of Cognitive Linguistics, Institute for Cognitive Science Studies (ICSS), Tehran, Iran.
Institute of Medical Psychology and Behavioral Neurobiology, University of Tubingen, Tubingen, Germany.
Brain Lang. 2019 Jul;194:93-97. doi: 10.1016/j.bandl.2019.05.004. Epub 2019 May 28.
Patients with completely locked-in syndrome (CLIS) are incapable of any voluntary muscle movement and do not have any means of communication. Recently functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) based brain computer interface (BCI) has been successfully used to enable communication with these patients. The developed fNIRS-BCI system relies on the intactness of language comprehension in these patients in all dimensions of language. Interwoven language and motor cortex in brain, and lack of muscular activity in long run, can cause language attrition due to complete immobility in CLIS patients. In this study we have investigated effects of semantic content of sentences presented to a CLIS patient on the performance of the BCI system during a YES/NO paradigm. Comparison of communication success rate in BCI classification between different semantic categories indicate that semantic content of sentences presented to a CLIS patient can affect the BCI performance. Affected concepts are mostly associated with executive words. These findings can be beneficial towards development of more reliable communication device for patients in CLIS. In addition, these results may assist in elucidating the cognitive changes in completely paralyzed patients with the passage of time since the onset of total immovability.
完全性闭锁综合征（CLIS）患者无法进行任何自主肌肉运动，也没有任何交流手段。最近，基于功能近红外光谱（fNIRS）的脑机接口（BCI）已成功用于与这些患者进行交流。该开发的 fNIRS-BCI 系统依赖于这些患者在语言理解的所有维度上的完整性。大脑中交织的语言和运动皮层，以及长期缺乏肌肉活动，可能会由于 CLIS 患者的完全不动而导致语言损耗。在这项研究中，我们研究了向 CLIS 患者呈现的句子的语义内容对 YES/NO 范式中 BCI 系统性能的影响。在 BCI 分类中对不同语义类别之间的通信成功率进行比较，表明向 CLIS 患者呈现的句子的语义内容会影响 BCI 的性能。受影响的概念主要与执行词有关。这些发现有助于为 CLIS 患者开发更可靠的通信设备。此外，这些结果可能有助于阐明随着完全不动的总发病时间的流逝，完全瘫痪患者的认知变化。
