Evidence map›Paper›PMID 25740220›Full record

ArticleBrain : a journal of neurology2015

Neural detection of complex sound sequences in the absence of consciousness.

Athina Tzovara, Alexandre Simonin, Mauro Oddo, Andrea O Rossetti, Marzia De Lucia

Open access · bronzeAbstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Brain : a journal of neurology, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 33 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
33citing papers in PubMed, 1 pooled it
4.6field-weighted citation impact, top 5% of its field
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

33 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 67 citations in OpenAlex.

  1. Pooled it
  2. Article
  3. Repetitions trigger illusory awareness in implicit statistical learning.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026
    Article
  4. Illuminating consciousness.Frontiers in psychology · 2026
    Review
  5. Article
  6. Review
  7. Article
  8. Article
  9. Article
  10. Communication in the ICU: An Unintended Nocebo Effect?Journal of patient experience · 2024
    Article
  11. Review
  12. Article
  13. Review
  14. Evoked and Event-Related Potentials as Biomarkers of Consciousness State and Recovery.Journal of clinical neurophysiology : official publication of the American Electroencephalographic Society · 2022
    Review
  15. Article
  16. Review
  17. Review
  18. Review
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  20. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

5 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.

Athina Tzovara1 Centre for Biomedical Imaging (CIBM), Department of Radiology, Lausanne, University Hospital and University of Lausanne, CH-1011 Lausanne, Switzerland 2 Laboratoire de Recherche en Neuroimagerie (LREN), Department of Clinical Neurosciences, Lausanne University and University Hospital, Lausanne, CH-1011, Switzerland.
Alexandre Simonin3 Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University Hospital, Lausanne, CH-1011, Switzerland.
Mauro Oddo4 Department of Intensive Care Medicine, CH-1011, Lausanne University Hospital, Switzerland.
Andrea O Rossetti3 Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University Hospital, Lausanne, CH-1011, Switzerland.
Marzia De Lucia1 Centre for Biomedical Imaging (CIBM), Department of Radiology, Lausanne, University Hospital and University of Lausanne, CH-1011 Lausanne, Switzerland 2 Laboratoire de Recherche en Neuroimagerie (LREN), Department of Clinical Neurosciences, Lausanne University and University Hospital, Lausanne, CH-1011, Switzerland Marzia.De-Lucia@chuv.ch.
University of Lausanne · CHCentre d'Imagerie BioMedicale · CH

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

The neural response to a violation of sequences of identical sounds is a typical example of the brain's sensitivity to auditory regularities. Previous literature interprets this effect as a pre-attentive and unconscious processing of sensory stimuli. By contrast, a violation to auditory global regularities, i.e. based on repeating groups of sounds, is typically detectable when subjects can consciously perceive them. Here, we challenge the notion that global detection implies consciousness by testing the neural response to global violations in a group of 24 patients with post-anoxic coma (three females, age range 45-87 years), treated with mild therapeutic hypothermia and sedation. By applying a decoding analysis to electroencephalographic responses to standard versus deviant sound sequences, we found above-chance decoding performance in 10 of 24 patients (Wilcoxon signed-rank test, P < 0.001), despite five of them being mildly hypothermic, sedated and unarousable. Furthermore, consistently with previous findings based on the mismatch negativity the progression of this decoding performance was informative of patients' chances of awakening (78% predictive of awakening). Our results show for the first time that detection of global regularities at neural level exists despite a deeply unconscious state.

Indexed as

SoundAcoustic StimulationAgedAged, 80 and overAttentionAuditory PerceptionConsciousnessElectroencephalographyEvoked Potentials, AuditoryFemaleHumansMaleMiddle Agedauditory systemcomaconsciousnessEEGhypothermia

Identifiers

PMID25740220
PMCPMC5963404
OpenAlexW2122920437

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.