{"id":107448,"date":"2020-05-22T09:46:16","date_gmt":"2020-05-22T16:46:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/05\/new-sniff-test-predicts-recovery-of-consciousness-in-the-brain"},"modified":"2020-05-22T09:46:16","modified_gmt":"2020-05-22T16:46:16","slug":"new-sniff-test-predicts-recovery-of-consciousness-in-the-brain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/05\/new-sniff-test-predicts-recovery-of-consciousness-in-the-brain","title":{"rendered":"New \u2018sniff test\u2019 predicts recovery of consciousness in the brain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/new-sniff-test-predicts-recovery-of-consciousness-in-the-brain2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>If an unconscious person responds to smell through a slight change in their nasal airflow pattern \u2014 they are likely to regain consciousness. This is the conclusion from a new study conducted by Weizmann Institute scientists and colleagues at the Loewenstein Rehabilitation Hospital, Israel. According to the findings, published in the journal <em>Nature<\/em>, 100% of the unconscious brain-injured patients who responded to a \u201csniff test\u201d developed by the researchers regained consciousness during the four-year study period. The scientists think that this simple, inexpensive test can aid doctors in accurately diagnosing and determining treatment plans according to the patients\u2019 degree of brain injury. The scientists conclude that this finding once again highlights the primal role of the sense of smell in human brain organization. The olfactory system is the most ancient part of the brain, and its integrity provides an accurate measure of overall brain integrity.<\/p>\n<p>Following severe brain injury, it is often difficult to determine whether the person is conscious or unconscious, and current diagnostic tests can lead to an incorrect diagnosis in up to 40% of cases. \u201cMisdiagnosis can be critical as it can influence the decision of whether to disconnect patients from life support machines,\u201d says Dr. Anat Arzi, who led the research. \u201cIn regard to treatment, if it is judged that a patient is unconscious and doesn\u2019t feel anything, physicians may not prescribe them painkillers that they might need.\u201d Arzi commenced this research during her doctoral studies in the group of Prof. Noam Sobel of the Weizmann Institute of Science\u2019s Neurobiology Department and continued it as part of her postdoctoral research at the University of Cambridge\u2019s Department of Psychology.<\/p>\n<p>The \u201cconsciousness test\u201d developed by the researchers \u2014 in collaboration with Dr. Yaron Sacher, Head of the Department of Traumatic Brain Injury Rehabilitation at Loewenstein Rehabilitation Hospital \u2014 is based on the principle that our nasal airflow changes in response to odor; for example, an unpleasant odor will lead to shorter and shallower sniffs. In healthy humans, the sniff-response can occur unconsciously in both wakefulness and sleep.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If an unconscious person responds to smell through a slight change in their nasal airflow pattern \u2014 they are likely to regain consciousness. This is the conclusion from a new study conducted by Weizmann Institute scientists and colleagues at the Loewenstein Rehabilitation Hospital, Israel. According to the findings, published in the journal Nature, 100% of [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-107448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107448\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}