Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation improves consciousness disturbance in stroke patients A quantitative electroencephalography spectral power analysis

Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation is a noninvasive treatment technique that can directly alter cortical excitability and improve cerebral functional activity in unconscious patients. To investigate the effects and the electrophysiological changes of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation cortical treatment, 10 stroke patients with non-severe brainstem lesions and with disturbance of consciousness were treated with repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation. A quantitative electroencephalography spectral power analysis was also performed. The absolute power in the alpha band was increased immediately after the first repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation treatment, and the energy was reduced in the delta band. The alpha band relative power values slightly decreased at 1 day post-treatment, then increased and reached a stable level at 2 weeks post-treatment. Glasgow Coma Score and JFK Coma Recovery Scale-Revised score were improved. Relative power value in the alpha band was positively related to Glasgow Coma Score and JFK Coma Recovery Scale-Revised score. These data suggest that repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation is a noninvasive, safe, and effective treatment technology for improving brain functional activity and promoting awakening in unconscious stroke patients.

Study on eliminating noises in short-period data of geomagnetic intensity by using nu-merical multichannel predictive filtering

The effectiveness of eliminating the noises in short-period data of geomagnetic intensity recorded in a little seismo-geomagnetic array by using numerical multichannel predictive filtering has been studied. The result shows that this technique is effective to fit external magnetic disturbance to inner electromagnetic induced difference field and reduce the noise level of difference data successfully. The filter quality factor Q of two examples in this work are 0. 86 and 0.68 respectively. The spectral analysis shows that during geomagnetic-calm days the fourfold-frequency harmonics of S q in difference data are main components. The length of the optimum filter depends on not only the frequency of predicable energy in difference data but also maybe the phase difference between input and expected output data. It is difficult to obtain the filter fitting both the data during magnetic-disturbed days and calm days. The result shows that the conductivity in Yanqing-Huailai basin west to Beijing may be much non-uniform.