Date of Award

5-2026

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Biomedical Engineering and Sciences

First Advisor

Sujoy Ghosh Hajra

Second Advisor

Kenia Pedrosa Nunes

Third Advisor

Caressa Liu

Fourth Advisor

Linxia Gu

Abstract

Each year, over 6 million individuals globally suffer from cardiac arrest. Despite neurological damage being the main cause of the high mortality and morbidity rate, no direct method exists to timely and accurately predict neurologic outcomes. Currently, electroencephalography and electrocardiography are utilized independently of one another and provide separate assessments of brain and cardiac function, despite neurological injury being caused by an issue in the heart. In this context, the interaction between the central and autonomic nervous systems and how they jointly impact neurologic outcomes in post-cardiac arrest patients remains understudied. It is hypothesized that identifying a physiological link between the two nervous systems may provide insight to a novel method for prediction of neurologic outcome. Spontaneous blinking has been shown to reflect cognitive processing, and is therefore hypothesized to be indicative of neurologic outcome in post-cardiac arrest patients. In the central nervous system, statistically significant increases in frequency band power time-locked to spontaneous blinks were observed in patients with good neurologic outcomes but not in patients with poor neurologic outcomes. In the autonomic nervous system, statistically significant heart rate acceleration patterns time-locked to spontaneous blinks were present only in patients with good neurologic outcomes. These findings show that when time-locked to the same physiological event, spontaneous blinking, the central and autonomic nervous systems show coordinated responses based on neurologic outcome. This indicates that spontaneous blinking may provide a novel method to noninvasively serve as a predictor of neurological outcomes in post-cardiac arrest patients.

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