Brain injuries: mapping consciousness

Severe brain injuries can occur anywhere, anytime, and at any stage of life. They represent a significant public health problem worldwide, affecting millions of people each year. Regardless of their cause, these injuries can lead to lasting consciousness disorders. Current bedside methods for assessing consciousness are often inadequate, leading to uncertainty in treatment decisions and prognosis determination.

OUR CHALLENGE

Creating a personalized approach to patient diagnosis and treatment

An accurate diagnosis shortly after a brain injury is crucial. Paris Brain Institute and Columbia University (United States) are joining forces to develop new tools to improve the diagnosis and treatment of consciousness disorders.

Pooling expertise in consciousness disorders

The new international team, jointly led by Jacobo Sitt, MD, PhD, at Paris Brain Institute, and Jan Claassen, MD, at Columbia University’s Disorders of Consciousness Lab, is driven by a shared ambition to support basic research and future clinical trials. This project will enable data to be collected at two clinical sites, thereby pooling expertise.

Transforming care and improving outcomes

The primary objective of the project is to create a unified database and simplify technology transfer between the two institutions. The project requires:

• The acquisition of new equipment such as an amplifier for EEG recordings of patients’ brain activity
• Recruitment of a postdoctoral researcher and an engineer at Paris Brain Institute for protocol development and data-related tasks
• Recruitment of a data scientist at Columbia University for protocol development and data analysis