Towards a data-driven neurophysiology of auditory consciousness in health and coma – SOUNDS4COMA

The detection of consciousness in coma patients is a major clinical issue in critical care (ICU). Sound stimulation holds tremendous promise to reach to these patients but, despite much research, it remains plagued with critical limitations. Project Sounds4Coma brings together academic and medical experts in acoustics, system science, neurophysiology and critical care, to propose a radically novel, 'data-driven' approach to using sound in the ICU. Building on recent advances in system science methods for neuroscience, the project will (1) create new computational methods able to engineer sound stimuli that are optimized and personalized for coma diagnosis, (2)identify novel neural scalp and intracranial EEG markers of covert consciousness in response to these sounds and (3)conduct pre-clinical studies testing the ability for the new sounds and markers to improve consciousness diagnosis in coma patients, in two newly built ICU rooms specially designed for the project.