Prolonged disorders of consciousness (PDoC) can occur after a severe brain injury. One of the challenges surrounding PDoC is establishing whether a patient is aware or conscious following the injury as they may not be able to speak or move to communicate – this can be agonising for the patient, their families and clinicians alike. By analysing brain activity and using advanced AI, NeuroCONCISE may enable patients to establish new, basic channels of communication, even if they’re unable to physically speak or move — empowering clinicians to augment the assessment of patients which can often be prolonged and subjective, addressing unmet clinical needs and improving clinical outcomes/quality of life for their patients.
After establishing a patient is aware and has the capacity to modulate brain activity by imagined movement it is possible the patient could learn to use the technology to establish a basic communication channel. Severe brain injuries caused by trauma or brainstem stroke or diseases such as motor neurone disease can lead to Locked-in Syndrome or complete locked syndrome — a condition where a person is established to be cognitively aware and conscious, but has no means of movement or observable motor responses.
In less severe situations, NeuroCONCISE technology can also be interfaced with other assistive technologies (robotics, prosthetics, environmental control, games and more) to enable people with varying levels of movement capacity to exploit the intact signalling in the brain to enable alternative interaction with technology.
Stroke is the leading cause of disabilities in developed countries with approximately 10 million new cases every year. Limb movement is often affected when a person experiences a stroke. To enable recovery of lost limb function the patient performs repetitive movement therapy, often assisted by a therapist, electrical stimulation or an orthosis/exoskeleton which can easily get tiring for the patient and result in poor rehabilitation outcomes. Motor imagery — imagined movements of the limbs, has been shown to positively impact rehabilitation. NeuroCONCISE technology provides immediate, visual feedback of brain function to the user ensuring motivation is maintained and brain is engaged to maximize recovery in a planned rehab programme.
Flexible and holistic motor rehabilitation (upper limb, lower limb) and cognitive rehabilitation may be provided by neurotechnology. Current available published evidence on motor imagery BCI supported rehab, obtained across 10 randomised control trials, shows clinically important outcomes in functional recovery with neurotechnology providing more than twice the functional recovery provided by other therapies and state-of-the-art rehab technologies.
NeuroCONCISE has developed a suite of neurogaming applications that help neurotechnology users learn to modulate brain activity and have fun whilst learning. NeuroCONCISE neurogaming technology offers a similar experience to the user as that provided by typical video games – fun, immersion, presence, challenge and competition.
Cybathletes with spinal injury train with our games to compete in international competitions such as Cybathlon, stroke survivors are motivated to undertake games tasks that may help with rehabilitation and even those that lack capacity to move or see can experience therapeutic benefits from interacting with and manipulating sounds and music using our advanced auditory feedback technology.
Using our FlexEEG™ technology we have investigated if multiple sessions of neurofeedback (NF) training (alpha down regulation to promote alpha rebound) or motor-imagery brain-computer interface (MI-BCI) training (to modulate mu and beta and associated brain networks) impacts PTSD symptom severity in a population within a developing country.
A significant reduction in symptom severity was found for the NF group on four of seven post-clinical assessment PTSD measures. Furthermore, the NF group demonstrated a significant increase in resting state alpha following individual training sessions, termed alpha ‘rebound’, consistent with previous research findings. These findings provide the first evidence that neurofeedback may be an effective and clinically relevant treatment of PTSD in persons with acute trauma in Rwanda and wearable neurotechnology may be a viable low-cost, neurotechnological approach for PTSD treatment in developing countries.
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