Fabio Babiloni

Time-varying effective connectivity of the cortical neuroelectric activity associated with behavioural microsleeps

Publisher: Elsevier BV

Date: 2016

DOI: 10.1016/J.NEUROIMAGE.2015.08.059

Abstract: An episode of complete failure to respond during an attentive task accompanied by behavioural signs of sleep is called a behavioural microsleep. We proposed a combination of high-resolution EEG and an advanced method for time-varying effective connectivity estimation for reconstructing the temporal evolution of the causal relations between cortical regions when microsleeps occur during a continuous visuomotor task. We found connectivity patterns involving left-right frontal, left-right parietal, and left-frontal/right-parietal connections commencing in the interval [-500 -250] ms prior to the onset of microsleeps and disappearing at the end of the microsleeps. Our results from global graph indices derived from effective connectivity analysis have revealed EEG-based biomarkers of all stages of microsleeps (preceding, onset, pre-recovery, recovery). In particular, this raises the possibility of being able to predict microsleeps in real-world tasks and initiate a 'wake-up' intervention to avert the microsleeps and, hence, prevent injurious and even multi-fatality accidents.

Time-varying functional connectivity for understanding the neural basis of behavioral microsleeps

Publisher: IEEE

Date: 08-2012

DOI: 10.1109/EMBC.2012.6347018

Sapienza University Of Rome

Location: Italy

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Universita Degli Studi Di Roma La Sapienza

Location: Italy

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Helsinki University Of Technology

Location: Finland

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