Brain activity and medical diagnosis: an EEG study

BMC Neuroscience

Eduardo Massad²  Armando Freitas da Rocha¹  Neli Regina Siqueira Ortega²  Fábio Theoto Rocha¹  Laila Massad Ribas² 

[1] RANI – Research on Artificial and Natural Intelligence, Jundiaí, Brazil;School of Medicine, University of São Paulo and LIM 01-HCMFMUSP, Dr. Arnaldo 455, 01246-903, São Paulo, Brazil

关键词: Decision-making;    Human cognition;    Brain mapping;    EEG analysis;    Medical diagnosis;   

Others  :  1170578
DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2202-14-109

 received in 2012-10-03, accepted in 2013-09-19,  发布年份 2013

【 摘 要 】

Background

Despite new brain imaging techniques that have improved the study of the underlying processes of human decision-making, to the best of our knowledge, there have been very few studies that have attempted to investigate brain activity during medical diagnostic processing. We investigated brain electroencephalography (EEG) activity associated with diagnostic decision-making in the realm of veterinary medicine using X-rays as a fundamental auxiliary test. EEG signals were analysed using Principal Components (PCA) and Logistic Regression Analysis

Results

The principal component analysis revealed three patterns that accounted for 85% of the total variance in the EEG activity recorded while veterinary doctors read a clinical history, examined an X-ray image pertinent to a medical case, and selected among alternative diagnostic hypotheses. Two of these patterns are proposed to be associated with visual processing and the executive control of the task. The other two patterns are proposed to be related to the reasoning process that occurs during diagnostic decision-making.

Conclusions

PCA analysis was successful in disclosing the different patterns of brain activity associated with hypothesis triggering and handling (pattern P₁); identification uncertainty and prevalence assessment (pattern P₃), and hypothesis plausibility calculation (pattern P₂); Logistic regression analysis was successful in disclosing the brain activity associated with clinical reasoning success, and together with regression analysis showed that clinical practice reorganizes the neural circuits supporting clinical reasoning.

【 授权许可】

   
2013 Ribas et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

【 图 表 】

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