Spinal cord stimulation improves brain connectivity and consciousness level in patients with disorders of consciousness

IF 4.5 2区医学 Q1 NEUROIMAGING

NeuroImage Pub Date : 2026-02-15 Epub Date: 2026-01-16 DOI:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2026.121694

Adilijiang Aihemaitiniyazi , Tiemin Li , Huawei Zhang , Da Wei , Pu Cai , Wei Wang , Guoming Luan , Yong Wang , Changqing Liu

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Objective

Spinal cord stimulation (SCS) is an advanced neuromodulation technology in disorders of consciousness (DOC) field. However, research on the modulation effects and mechanisms of SCS is limited.

Method

We proposed a study design (SCS and sham) to study the short-term effects of 20 minutes’ SCS, in which resting state EEG and Coma Recovery Scale-Revised (CRS-R) were used to measure the changes in neural and behavioral activity caused by SCS. We used the Genuine Permutation Cross Mutual Information(G_PCMI) to analyze EEG data and study changes in cortical connectivity during SCS. Finally, all patients’ CRS-R results were obtained after 6 months’ SCS treatment.

Results

Short-term SCS (20 min) did not alter the patient's CRS-R score, but long-term SCS (6 months) can improve the CRS-R scores of all patients. EEG results show G_PCMI of the frontal and central brain regions significantly change before and after short-term SCS (p < 0.01) and PCMI of the F-P, F-O regions have significant differences before and after short-term SCS (p < 0.05). Besides, the G_PCMI changes in frontal, parietal, F-P and F-O regions show a significant positive correlation with CRS-R changes (r = 0.80, 0.66, 0.68 and 0.72; p < 0.05). However, the sham group showed no significant G_PCMI changes.

Conclusion

SCS can improve the awareness level of DOC patients. SCS improves cortical short- and long-distance connectivity of DOC patients may contribute the improvement of consciousness level.

查看原文本刊更多论文

脊髓刺激可改善意识障碍患者的大脑连通性和意识水平。

目的：脊髓刺激（SCS）是意识障碍（DOC）领域的一种先进的神经调节技术。然而，对SCS的调节作用和机制的研究还很有限。方法：采用静息状态脑电图（EEG）和昏迷恢复量表（CRS-R）测量脑电刺激引起的神经和行为活动变化，研究20分钟脑电刺激的短期效应。我们利用真排列交叉互信息（G_PCMI）分析脑电数据，研究脑皮层连通性的变化。最后，所有患者在SCS治疗6个月后获得CRS-R结果。结果：短期SCS（20分钟）未改变患者的CRS-R评分，而长期SCS（6个月）可改善所有患者的CRS-R评分。脑电图结果显示，短期SCS前后脑额区和中央区G_PCMI变化显著(p结论：SCS可提高DOC患者的认知水平。SCS改善DOC患者的皮层近距离和远距离连通性可能有助于意识水平的提高。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

NeuroImage 医学-核医学

CiteScore

11.30

自引率

10.50%

发文量

809

审稿时长

63 days

期刊介绍： NeuroImage, a Journal of Brain Function provides a vehicle for communicating important advances in acquiring, analyzing, and modelling neuroimaging data and in applying these techniques to the study of structure-function and brain-behavior relationships. Though the emphasis is on the macroscopic level of human brain organization, meso-and microscopic neuroimaging across all species will be considered if informative for understanding the aforementioned relationships.