Event-Related Potentials in a Clinical Setting
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Application of event-related potentials in a clinical setting as positive outcome predictors in coma: a feasibility study of proposed protocol using healthy participants.
IRAS ID
245620
Contact name
Paul Furlong
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Aston University
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 9 months, 31 days
Research summary
Assessing the consciousness of patients in comas is a challenging area of research and clinical practice and is important in predicting whether the patient will recover (have a positive outcome). Commonly, measures of behaviour such as response to pain are used, however, these behaviours can be difficult to detect and can fluctuate. A new tool, known as event-related potentials (ERPs), has been proposed. ERPs represent changes in a patient’s brain activity (potentials) in response to an event, such as hearing an occasional, unexpected sound (e.g. one that is higher pitch/more familiar)among many identical sounds. The brain responses produced are the P300 and mismatch negativity (MMN) potentials. This study will develop and evaluate different methods of performing this brain activity test with healthy staff volunteers and using only the equipment available in standard Neurophysiology Departments. There will be two test designs; 1) The participant will either listen to a tone or to a voice sound and will be asked to ignore the noises or 2) Count the number occasional sounds. Participants will perform both tests designs, which will take up to 2 hours. They will then repeat the whole test after approximately two weeks to see if the responses differ. The study will also investigate how feasible it is to perform the test design (protocol) within the Neurophysiology setting; investigating factors such as test duration and cost. The aim of this research is to find the most effective test design to produce P200 and MMN potentials. The participants will consist of volunteer NHS Trust staff members and the research will be conducted at the University Hospital Southampton Trust.
REC name
East of England - Essex Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
18/EE/0341
Date of REC Opinion
13 Nov 2018
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion