Search results for " Electroencephalography"

Bio-electromagnetic Numerical Modeling for Health Diagnostics

Consensus protocol for EEG and amplitude-integrated EEG assessment and monitoring in neonates

2021

The aim of this work is to establish inclusive guidelines on electroencephalography (EEG) applicable to all neonatal intensive care units (NICUs). Guidelines on ideal EEG monitoring for neonates are available, but there are significant barriers to their implementation in many centres around the world. These includebarriers due to limited resources regarding the availability of equipment and technical and interpretive round-the-clock personnel. On the other hand, despite its limitations, amplitude-integrated EEG (aEEG) (previously called Cerebral Function Monitor [CFM]) is a common alternative used in NICUs.The Italian Neonatal Seizure Collaborative Network (INNESCO), working with all nation…

Efficacy of levetiracetam in the treatment of drug-resistant Rett Syndrome.

2010

Rett syndrome (RTT) is a progressive neurological disorder characterized by a wide spectrum of phenotypes. Epilepsy is reported to occur in 50–90% of patients with RTT; some develop medically refractory epilepsy. The aim of this study is to investigate the efficacy of levetiracetam (LEV) in drug-resistant patients with RTT. This prospective, pragmatic, open-label study consisted of an 8-week baseline period and a 6-month evaluation period. Efficacy variable was the mean frequency of monthly seizures before, and after 3 and 6 months of treatment with LEV. Eight female patients, aged 7.5–19 years (M12.8 ± 5) entered the study. Mean age at epilepsy onset was 25.8 ± 14.1 months. All patients sh…

Dysfunction of attention switching networks in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

2019

Objective To localise and characterise changes in cognitive networks in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) using source analysis of mismatch negativity (MMN) waveforms. Rationale The MMN waveform has an increased average delay in ALS. MMN has been attributed to change detection and involuntary attention switching. This therefore indicates pathological impairment of the neural network components which generate these functions. Source localisation can mitigate the poor spatial resolution of sensor-level EEG analysis by associating the sensor-level signals to the contributing brain sources. The functional activity in each generating source can therefore be individually measured and investigat…

Quantification of cortical proprioceptive processing through a wireless and miniaturized EEG amplifier.

2022

Corticokinematic coherence (CKC) is computed between limb kinematics and cortical activity (e.g. MEG, EEG), and it can be used to detect, quantify and localize the cortical processing of proprioceptive afference arising from the body. EEG-based studies on CKC have been limited to lab environments due to bulky, non-portable instrumentations. We recently proposed a wireless and miniaturized EEG acquisition system aimed at enabling EEG studies outside the laboratory. The purpose of this work is to compare the EEG-based CKC values obtained with this device with a conventional wired-EEG acquisition system to validate its use in the quantification of cortical proprioceptive processing. Eleven hea…

Estimation of brain connectivity through Artificial Neural Networks

2019

Among different methods available for estimating brain connectivity from electroencephalographic signals (EEG), those based on MVAR models have proved to be flexible and accurate. They rely on the solution of linear equations that can be pursued through artificial neural networks (ANNs) used as MVAR model. However, when few data samples are available, there is a lack of accuracy in estimating MVAR parameters due to the collinearity between regressors. Moreover, the assessment procedure is also affected by the lack of data points. The mathematical solution to these problems is represented by penalized regression methods based on l 1 norm, that can reduce collinearity by means of variable sel…

Design and validation of a wireless Body Sensor Network for integrated EEG and HD-sEMG acquisitions

2022

Sensorimotor integration is the process through which the human brain plans the motor program execution according to external sources. Within this context, corticomuscular and corticokinematic coherence analyses are common methods to investigate the mechanism underlying the central control of muscle activation. This requires the synchronous acquisition of several physiological signals, including EEG and sEMG. Nevertheless, physical constraints of the current, mostly wired, technologies limit their application in dynamic and naturalistic contexts. In fact, although many efforts were made in the development of biomedical instrumentation for EEG and High Density-surface EMG (HD-sEMG) signal ac…

Zonisamide in children and young adults with refractory epilepsy: an open label, multicenter Italian study

2009

Summary Purpose To report on the first multicenter Italian experience with zonisamide as an add-on drug for refractory generalised or partial epilepsy in children, adolescents and young adults. Methods The patients were enrolled in a prospective, add-on, open-label treatment study from eight Italian centres for children and adolescent epilepsy care. Eighty-two young patients (45 males, 37 females), aged between 3 and 34 years (mean 13.1 years), all affected by partial (47) or generalised (35) refractory epilepsy, were enrolled in the study. ZNS was added to the baseline therapy at a starting dose of 1 mg/kg/day twice daily. This dose was increased by 2 mg/kg every 1–2 weeks over a period of…

Cerebral haemodynamic changes during propofol-remifentanil or sevoflurane anaesthesia: transcranial Doppler study under bispectral index monitoring

2006

Background. Sevoflurane or propofol–remifentanil-based anaesthetic regimens represent modern techniques for neurosurgical anaesthesia. Nevertheless, there are potential differences related to their activity on the cerebrovascular system. The magnitude of such difference is not completely known. Methods. In total 40 patients, treated for spinal or maxillo-facial disorders, were randomly allocated to either i.v. propofol–remifentanil or inhalational sevoflurane anaesthesia. Transcranial Doppler was used to assess changes in cerebral blood flow velocity, carbon dioxide reactivity, cerebral autoregulation and the bispectral index to assess the depth of anaesthesia. Results. Time-averaged mean f…

Distributed analysis of simultaneous EEG-fMRI time-series: modeling and interpretation issues

2009

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG) represent brain activity in terms of a reliable anatomical localization and a detailed temporal evolution of neural signals. Simultaneous EEG-fMRI recordings offer the possibility to greatly enrich the significance and the interpretation of the single modality results because the same neural processes are observed from the same brain at the same time. Nonetheless, the different physical nature of the measured signals by the two techniques renders the coupling not always straightforward, especially in cognitive experiments where spatially localized and distributed effects coexist and evolve temporally at different …