Steven Laureys

Steven Laureys
University of Liège | ulg · GIGA Consciousness

MD PhD FEAN - Neurologist and neuroscientistBelgian Funds for Scientific Research
Always looking for opportunities and clinical, scientific & industrial partners to help our field make progress.

About

1,035
Publications
790,226
Reads
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Introduction
Fascinated by the study of the human mind and brain in both health and disease. Aiming to translate the latest knowledge and technologies in neuroscience and brain plasticity to a better medical care for patients. Enthusiastic speaker and writer of popular books. Co-signer of the Cambridge declaration of consciousness and defender of animal wellbeing. Founder of Mind Care International Foundation. www.drstevenlaureys.org
Additional affiliations
January 2019 - May 2020
Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Liège
Position
  • Managing Director
September 2012 - May 2020
Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique (FNRS)
Position
  • Research Director
May 2014 - present
University of Liège
Position
  • Managing Director
Education
September 1986 - June 1993

Publications

Publications (1,035)
Article
Full-text available
Background/Objectives: Hypnosis shows great potential for managing patients suffering from fibromyalgia and chronic pain. Several studies have highlighted its efficacy in improving pain, quality of life, and reducing psychological distress. Despite its known feasibility and efficacy, the mechanisms of action remain poorly understood. Building on th...
Article
Severe brain injury can result in disorders of consciousness (DoC), including coma, vegetative state/unresponsive wakefulness syndrome, and minimally conscious state. Improved emergency and trauma medicine response, in addition to expanding efforts to prevent premature withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment, has led to an increased number of patie...
Article
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Experimental and clinical studies of consciousness identify brain states (i.e. quasi-stable functional cerebral organization) in a non-systematic manner and largely independent of the research into brain state modulation. In this narrative review, we synthesize advances in the identification of brain states associated with consciousness in animal m...
Article
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Background The diagnosis of and life-sustaining treatment (LST) for patients with disorders of consciousness (DoC) and locked-in syndrome (LIS) have been the subject of intense debate. Objective We aim to investigate the application of diagnostic knowledge, opinions about the administration of LST, and ethical challenges related to DoC and LIS. D...
Preprint
Full-text available
Patients with disorders of consciousness exhibit severe declines in arousal and awareness, alongside anomalous functional brain connections and aberrant neuronal activities. Yet, the diagnostic error of patients' consciousness states can reach up to forty percent, resulting in a worse prognosis. Neuronal mechanisms underlying the disorders are indi...
Article
Objectives The aim of this study was to analyze the Chinese version of the Nociception Coma Scale–Revised in patients with prolonged disorders of consciousness within the framework of Rasch modeling, including investigating the invariance of total scores across different etiologies of disorders of consciousness. Design Prospective psychometric stu...
Preprint
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Disorders of consciousness (DoC), including the unresponsive wakefulness syndrome (UWS) and the minimally conscious state (MCS), have limited treatment options. Recent research suggests that psychedelic drugs, known for their complexity-enhancing properties, could be promising treatments for DoC. This study uses whole-brain computational models to...
Article
Background: Patients with brain injury who are unresponsive to commands may perform cognitive tasks that are detected on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG). This phenomenon, known as cognitive motor dissociation, has not been systematically studied in a large cohort of persons with disorders of consciousn...
Article
Clinical management of persons with disorders of consciousness (DoC) is dedicated largely to optimizing recovery. However, selecting a measure to evaluate the extent of recovery is challenging because few measures are designed to precisely assess the full range of potential outcomes, from prolonged DoC to return of preinjury functioning. Measures t...
Conference Paper
Background Disorders of Consciousness (DoC), such as vegetative state/unresponsive wakefulness syndrome (VS/UWS) and minimally conscious state (MCS), severely impact patient quality of life, particularly through gastrointestinal (GI) complications, which are prevalent but understudied. This study aimed to address the epidemiological landscape of GI...
Preprint
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Psychedelic experiences open a colorful view into drug-induced changes in conscious awareness. Small-sample studies on psychedelic drug action have gained traction in recent years. Yet, today’s means for measuring changes in subjective experience are mostly limited to legacy questionnaires of pre-assumed relevance, which could be complemented by bo...
Article
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Consciousness has been proposed to be supported by electrophysiological patterns poised at criticality, a dynamical regime which exhibits adaptive computational properties, maximally complex patterns and divergent sensitivity to perturbation. Here, we investigate dynamical properties of the resting-state electroencephalogram (EEG) of healthy subjec...
Article
Background Even patients with normal computed tomography (CT) head imaging may experience persistent symptoms for months to years after mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI). There is currently no good way to predict recovery and triage patients who may benefit from early follow-up and targeted intervention. We aimed to assess if existing prognostic m...
Preprint
Full-text available
(1)Background: Patients with severe brain injuries who are bedridden for extended periods often exhibit diminished voluntary movements. This reduction can compromise the precision of CRS-R evaluations. The Arousal Facilitation Protocol (AFP)is designed to extend the duration of patient arousal through deep muscle pressure. Conversely, Neural Mobili...
Article
Full-text available
Neuroimaging studies have suggested an important role for the default mode network (DMN) in disorders of consciousness (DoC). However, the extent to which DMN connectivity can discriminate DoC states–unresponsive wakefulness syndrome (UWS) and minimally conscious state (MCS)–is less evident. Particularly, it is unclear whether effective DMN connect...
Chapter
Episodic autobiographical memory is a component of different models of self. Since it is impaired in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, patients are likely to experience impaired autobiographical self (“I lost myself”). Moreover, patients are not always aware of their memory impairment, and reduced awareness of self likely depends on a combin...
Chapter
The clinical examination of residual (self-) consciousness in severely brain-damaged patients remains challenging. This is because patients in coma, vegetative/unresponsive wakefulness, and minimally conscious states are by definition unable to communicate their subjective experiences. As a result, (self-) consciousness in this clinical population...
Article
Repeated mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) is of growing interest regarding public and sporting safety and is thought to have greater adverse or cumulative neurological effects when compared with single injury. While epidemiological links between repeated TBI and outcome have been investigated in humans, exploration of its mechanistic substrates h...
Article
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Objectives Surrogate decision-making by family caregivers for patients with severe brain injury is influenced by the availability and understanding of relevant information and expectations for future rehabilitation. We aimed to compare the consistency of family caregivers’ perceptions with clinical diagnoses and to inform their expectation of progn...
Article
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High-order interactions are required across brain regions to accomplish specific cognitive functions. These functional interdependencies are reflected by synergistic information that can be obtained by combining the information from all the sources considered and redundant information (i.e., common information provided by all the sources). However,...
Article
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Background: After a severe brain injury and a coma, patients may develop disorders of consciousness (DoC), frequently accompanied by severe dysphagia. The evaluation and therapy of swallowing are therefore essential aspects of their management. Objectives: This study aims to evaluate the SWallowing Assessment in Disorders of Consciousness (SWADOC)...
Article
Full-text available
A fundamental challenge in neuroscience is accurately defining brain states and predicting how and where to perturb the brain to force a transition. Here, we investigated resting-state fMRI data of patients suffering from disorders of consciousness (DoC) after coma (minimally conscious and unresponsive wakefulness states) and healthy controls. We a...
Article
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Background Headache is a prevalent and debilitating symptom following traumatic brain injury (TBI). Large-scale, prospective cohort studies are needed to establish long-term headache prevalence and associated factors after TBI. This study aimed to assess the frequency and severity of headache after TBI and determine whether sociodemographic factors...
Preprint
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The evolution from disturbed brain activity to physiological brain rhythms can precede recovery in patients with disorders of consciousness (DoC). Accordingly, intriguing questions arise: What are the pathophysiological factors responsible for disrupted brain rhythms in patients with DoC, and are there potential pathways for individual patients wit...
Chapter
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The notion that death represents a passing to an afterlife, where we are reunited with loved ones and live eternally in a utopian paradise, is common in the anecdotal reports of people who have encountered a “near-death experience” (NDE). These experiences are usually portrayed as being extremely pleasant including features such as a feeling of pea...
Chapter
As illustrated in the previous chapters, the clinical management of disorders of consciousness remains very difficult, but technological advances in neuroimaging, in EEG-based brain–computer interfaces and in treatments, are now offering new ways to improve the diagnostic, prognostic, and therapeutic management of these challenging conditions. In t...
Article
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Background Disconnected consciousness describes a state in which subjective experience (i.e., consciousness) becomes isolated from the external world. It appears frequently during sleep or sedation, when subjective experiences remain vivid but are unaffected by external stimuli. Traditional methods of differentiating connected and disconnected cons...
Article
BACKGROUND Human consciousness is generally thought to emerge from the activity of intrinsic connectivity networks (resting-state networks [RSNs]) of the brain, which have topological characteristics including, among others, graph strength and efficiency. So far, most functional brain imaging studies in anesthetized subjects have compared wakefulne...
Article
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Disorders of consciousness are neurological conditions characterized by impaired arousal and awareness of self and environment. Behavioral responses are absent or are present but fluctuating. Disorders of consciousness are commonly encountered in consequence of both acute and chronic brain injuries, yet reliable epidemiological estimates would requ...
Article
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Introduction In recent years, a growing number of near-death experience (NDE) testimonies have been collected worldwide due to an increasing interest in research on this phenomenon. China has many patients who survive life-threatening situations, leaving over much data on NDEs to be collected for research. In the historical context of Eastern civil...
Article
Following severe brain injuries, a subset of patients may remain in an altered state of consciousness; most of these patients require artificial feeding. Currently, a functional oral phase and the presence of exclusive oral feeding may constitute signs of consciousness. Additionally, the presence of pharyngo-laryngeal secretions, saliva aspiration,...
Article
Over the past 30 years, there have been significant advances in the understanding of the mechanisms associated with loss and recovery of consciousness following severe brain injury. This work has provided a strong grounding for the development of novel restorative therapeutic interventions. Although all interventions are aimed at modulating and the...
Article
Full-text available
People with severe brain damage can suffer from a disorder of consciousness (DoC) such as a coma. They may be unconscious for decades, with little or no awareness of themselves or their surroundings, or they might emerge slowly into consciousness. People with DoCs usually cannot control any of their movements to respond to questions, so diagnosing...
Article
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Objectives Long-term care of severe brain injury patients places a significant mental burden on family caregivers, yet few studies have reported the situation in China. We aimed to describe the mood states of family caregivers of patients with severe brain injury and examine the influencing factors that affect caregivers’ moods. Methods Cross-sect...
Article
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While the COVID-19 pandemic challenged the general public’s health and well-being, it exacerbated the pre-existing well-being issues in the educational sector in many countries. Mindfulness-based interventions are often applied to protect and promote occupational well-being. To investigate how the well-being benefits of these interventions arise, w...
Article
Over the last decades, theoretical perspectives in the interdisciplinary field of the affective sciences have proliferated rather than converged due to differing assumptions about what human affective phenomena are and how they work. These metaphysical and mechanistic assumptions, shaped by academic context and values, have dictated affective const...
Preprint
Full-text available
Consciousness has been proposed to be supported by electrophysiological patterns poised at criticality, a dynamical regime which exhibits adaptive computational properties, maximally complex patterns and divergent sensitivity to perturbation. Here, we investigated dynamical properties of the resting-state electroencephalogram of healthy subjects un...
Article
Background: The number of patients with disorders of consciousness (DoC) has increased dramatically with the advancement of intensive care and emergency medicine, which brings tremendous economic burdens and even ethical issues to families and society. Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of neuromodulation therapy for patients with DoC. Me...
Article
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The use of Brain–Computer Interfaces (BCI) as rehabilitation tools for chronically ill neurological patients has become more widespread. BCIs combined with other techniques allow the user to restore neurological function by inducing neuroplasticity through real-time detection of motor-imagery (MI) as patients perform therapy tasks. Twenty-five stro...
Article
Objectives We describe an atypical delayed neurologic recovery from coma and unresponsive wakefulness syndrome (i.e., persistent vegetative state) in a patient with severe drug-induced toxic leukoencephalopathy (presumably due to synthetic cannabinoid intake). Methods The patient underwent standardized behavioral and multimodal neuroimaging assess...
Article
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Diagnostic, prognostic, and therapeutic procedures for patients with prolonged disorders of consciousness (pDoCs) vary significantly across countries and clinical settings, likely due to organizational factors (e.g., research vs. non-academic hospitals), expertise and availability of resources (e.g., financial and human). Two international guidelin...
Article
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Self-induced cognitive trance (SICT) is a voluntary non-ordinary state of consciousness characterized by a lucid yet narrowed awareness of the external surroundings. It involves a hyper-focused immersive experience of flow, expanded inner imagery, modified somatosensory processing, and an altered perception of self and time. SICT is gaining attenti...
Preprint
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Significant advances in the scientific investigation of the neurobiology of consciousness have been slow to be translated into clinical settings, limited by factors of conceptual (e.g., what is consciousness?), methodological (e.g., how to identify reliable indicators of consciousness?), and technical (e.g., how to improve sensitivity and specifici...
Article
The recent publication of practice guidelines for management of patients with disorders of consciousness (DoC) in the United States and Europe was a major step forward in improving the accuracy and consistency of terminology, diagnostic criteria, and prognostication in this population. There remains a pressing need for a more precise brain injury c...
Article
The implementation of multimodality monitoring in the clinical management of patients with disorders of consciousness (DoC) results in physiological measurements that can be collected in a continuous and regular fashion or even at waveform resolution. Such data are considered part of the “Big Data” available in intensive care units and are potentia...
Article
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Background: Characterization of normal arousal states has been achieved by fitting predictions of corticothalamic neural field theory (NFT) to electroencephalographic (EEG) spectra to yield relevant physiological parameters. New method: A prior fitting method is extended to distinguish conscious and unconscious states in healthy and brain injure...
Article
Background: Over the past 5 decades, advances in neuroimaging have yielded insights into the pathophysiologic mechanisms that cause disorders of consciousness (DoC) in patients with severe brain injuries. Structural, functional, metabolic, and perfusion imaging studies have revealed specific neuroanatomic regions, such as the brainstem tegmentum,...
Article
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Background: Cortical excitability is higher in unconsciousness than in wakefulness, but it is unclear how this relates to anaesthesia. We investigated cortical excitability in response to dexmedetomidine, the effects of which are not fully known. Methods: We recorded transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and EEG in frontal and parietal cortex...
Article
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We assess cerebral integrity with cortical and subcortical FDG-PET and cortical electroencephalography (EEG) within the mesocircuit model framework in patients with disorders of consciousness (DoCs). The mesocircuit hypothesis proposes that subcortical activation facilitates cortical function. We find that the metabolic balance of subcortical mesoc...
Article
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Background Improving the functional recovery of patients with DoC remains one of the greatest challenges of the field. Different theories exist about the role of the anterior (prefrontal areas) versus posterior (parietal areas) parts of the brain as hotspots for the recovery of consciousness. Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) is a...
Preprint
Full-text available
A fundamental challenge in neuroscience is accurately defining brain states and predicting how and where to perturb the brain to force a transition. The ability to promote a transition from one brain state to another by externally driven stimulation could significantly impact rehabilitation and treatments for patients suffering from complex brain i...