Next phase in the brain health revolution: Objective, physiological, and widespread measures of brain function

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-- Credit: Marianne Meadahl, SFU
– Cred­it: Mar­i­anne Meadahl, SFU

Brain­waves could be the next health vital sign (Sci­enceDai­ly):

“Simon Fras­er Uni­ver­si­ty researchers hope that a brain vital-sign test becomes as rou­tine dur­ing a doc­tor’s check-up as tak­ing a blood pres­sure or heart rate mea­sure­ment…In a recent arti­cle pub­lished in the jour­nal Fron­tiers in Neu­ro­science, the team intro­duces the world’s first advance­ment in phys­i­ol­o­gy-based brain vital signs. Their dis­cov­ery makes it pos­si­ble to trans­late com­plex brain­waves into objec­tive, prac­ti­cal and deploy­able brain vital signs, using long­stand­ing brain­wave tech­nolo­gies that have exist­ed for near­ly a century.

HealthTech Con­nex Inc. is cur­rent­ly devel­op­ing the Neu­ro­CatchTM plat­form to enable the high­est qual­i­ty record­ings of the brain’s vital signs…

“The brain vital-sign frame­work described in Fron­tiers in Neu­ro­science rep­re­sents the first step towards an easy way to mon­i­tor brain health,” says D’Ar­cy. “Poten­tial appli­ca­tions are in con­cus­sion, brain injury, stroke, demen­tia and oth­er dev­as­tat­ing brain dis­eases and disorders.”

Study: Devel­op­ing Brain Vital Signs: Ini­tial Frame­work for Mon­i­tor­ing Brain Func­tion Changes Over Time (Fron­tiers in Neuroscience)

  • From the abstract: Clin­i­cal assess­ment of brain func­tion relies heav­i­ly on indi­rect behav­ior-based tests. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, behav­ior-based assess­ments are sub­jec­tive and there­fore sus­cep­ti­ble to sev­er­al con­found­ing fac­tors. Event-relat­ed brain poten­tials (ERPs), derived from elec­troen­cephalog­ra­phy (EEG), are often used to pro­vide objec­tive, phys­i­o­log­i­cal mea­sures of brain function…Clinical eval­u­a­tions of healthy brain func­tion­ing is mov­ing from indi­rect sub­jec­tive behav­ior-based tests, to objec­tive, phys­i­o­log­i­cal mea­sures of brain func­tion, such as those derived from ERPs. We have pre­vi­ous­ly demon­strat­ed the essen­tial role for clin­i­cal ERPs to eval­u­ate func­tion­al sta­tus fol­low­ing seri­ous injury and/or dis­ease. The cur­rent study addressed an impor­tant gap: the need for a clin­i­cal-acces­si­ble brain vital sign frame­work that uti­lizes well-estab­lished ERPs. As an ini­tial step, the frame­work was used to eval­u­ate healthy brain func­tion across the life span. The find­ings con­firmed the ERPs at the indi­vid­ual lev­el, ver­i­fied pre­dictable age-relat­ed dif­fer­ences, and demon­strat­ed suc­cess­ful lin­ear trans­for­ma­tion to cre­ate the brain vital sign framework.

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