Research home page of Dr. Srivas Chennu, Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Cambridge

My academic website is hosted at the University of Kent

Research |  Publications | Media |  Collaborations | Miscellaneous

	Snail mail	Herchel Smith Building Forvie Site, Robinson Way Cambridge CB2 0SZ United Kingdom
	E-mail	sc672@cam.ac.uk
	Phone	+44 1223 760687

Research

As a senior research associate in the Cambridge Research into Impaired Consciousness (CRIC) group, I develop computational and empirical tools that use EEG (Electroencephalography) for characterising the neural correlates of cognition in altered states of consciousness, including sleep, anaesthesia, and the vegetative and minimally conscious states. I am funded by the James S. McDonnell Foundation and the Medical Research Council. I also work on developing BCIs (Brain Computer Interfaces) for patients with these disorders of consciousness. I am a College Research Associate at Homerton College, and a visiting scientist at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge and the University of Kent at Canterbury.

Publications

My publications can also be found at my Google Scholar profile.

2016

• Gibson, R., Chennu, S., Fernández-Espejo, D., Naci, L., Owen, A. & Cruse, D. 2016. Somatosensory attention identifies both overt and covert awareness in disorders of consciousness. Annals of Neurology, In press.

• Panda, R., Bharath, R. D., Upadhyay, N., Mangalore, S., Chennu, S. & Rao, S. L. 2016. Temporal dynamics of the default mode network characterise meditation-induced alterations in consciousness. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, In press. PDF

• Chennu, S., Noreika, V., Gueorguiev, D., Shtyrov, Y., Bekinschtein, T. & Henson, R. 2016. Silent Expectations: Dynamic Causal Modelling of Cortical Prediction and Attention to Sounds that Weren't. The Journal of Neuroscience, In press. PDF

• Chennu, S., Stamatakis, E. A. & Menon, D. K. 2016. The see-saw brain: recovering consciousness after brain injury. The Lancet Neurology, 15(8), 781-782.

• Naccache, L., Sitt, J., King, J.-R., Rohaut, B., Faugeras, F., Chennu, S., Strauss, M., Valente, M., Engemann, D., Raimondo, F., Demertzi, A., Bekinschtein, T. & Dehaene, S. 2016. Reply: Replicability and impact of statistics in the detection of neural responses of consciousness. Brain, aww060.

• Chennu, S., O'Connor, S., Adapa, R., Menon, D. K. & Bekinschtein, T. A. 2015. Brain connectivity dissociates responsiveness from drug exposure during propofol-induced transitions of consciousness. PLOS Computational Biology, 12(1), e1004669. PDF

  The research in this article showed that resting EEG brain connectivity can predict and track the transition to unconsciousness during propofol sedation, and also dissociate the loss of behavioural responsiveness from the concentration of the drug in blood.

   
  Brain networks during the transition to unconsciousness during propofol sedation (drug infusion timeline shown in red). Participants with robust networks at baseline (left panel) remained resistant to the sedative, while others showed characteristically different, weaker networks during unconsciousness (middle). All participants regained similar networks when the sedative wore off (right).

• Kuttikat, A., Noreika, V., Shenker, N., Chennu, S., Bekinschtein, T. & Brown, C. A. 2016. Neurocognitive and Neuroplastic Mechanisms of Novel Clinical Signs in CRPS. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 10.

2015

• Gonzalez-Gadea*, M. L., Chennu*, S., Bekinschtein, T. A., Rattazzi, A., Beraudi, A., Tripicchio, P., Moyano, B., Soffita, Y., Steinberg, L., Adolfi, F., Sigman, M., Marino, J., Manes, F. & Ibanez, A. 2015. Predictive coding in autism spectrum disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Journal of Neurophysiology, 114, 2625-36. PDF

• Naccache, L., King, J. R., Sitt, J., Engemann, D., El Karoui, I., Rohaut, B., Faugeras, F., Chennu, S., Strauss, M., Bekinschtein, T. & Dehaene, S. 2015. Neural detection of complex sound sequences or of statistical regularities in the absence of consciousness? Brain, 10.1093/brain/awv190. PDF

• Canales-Johnson, A., Silva, C., Huepe, D., Rivera-Rei, Á., Noreika, V., Garcia, M. d. C., Silva, W., Ciraolo, C., Vaucheret, E., Sedeño, L., Couto, B., Kargieman, L., Baglivo, F., Sigman, M., Chennu, S., Ibáñez, A., Rodríguez, E. & Bekinschtein, T. A. 2015. Auditory Feedback Differentially Modulates Behavioral and Neural Markers of Objective and Subjective Performance When Tapping to Your Heartbeat. Cerebral Cortex, 25, 4490-4503. PDF

• Kirschner, A., Cruse, D., Chennu, S., Owen, A. & Hampshire, A. 2015. A P300 Based Cognitive Assessment Battery for Severely Motor-impaired and Overtly Non-Responsive Patients. Brain and Behavior, 5, e00336. PDF

2014

• Chennu, S., Finoia, P., Kamau, E., Allanson, J., Williams, G. B., Monti, M. M., Noreika, V., Arnatkeviciute, A., Canales-Johnson, A. S., Olivares, F., Cabezas-Soto, D., Menon, D. K., Pickard, J. D., Owen, A. M. & Bekinschtein, T. A. 2014. Spectral signatures of reorganised brain networks in disorders of consciousness. PLOS Computational Biology, 10(10), e1003887. PDF

  This article shows that the rich and diversely connected networks that support awareness in the healthy brain are typically – but importantly, not always – impaired in patients in a vegetative state. Some patients had well-preserved brain networks that looked similar to those of healthy adults – these patients were those who had shown signs of hidden awareness by following commands like imagining playing tennis in an MRI scanner.

  
  Brain networks in two behaviourally similar vegetative patients (left and middle), but one of whom imagined playing tennis (middle panel), alongside a healthy adult (right panel).

• Cruse, D., Beukema, S., Chennu, S., Malins, J. G., Owen, A. M. & McRae, K. 2014. The reliability of the N400 in single subjects: Implications for patients with disorders of consciousness. NeuroImage: Clinical, 4, 788-799. PDF

• Gibson, R. M., Chennu, S., Owen, A. M. & Cruse, D. 2014. Complexity and familiarity enhance single-trial detectability of imagined movements with electroencephalography. Clinical Neurophysiology, 125(8), 1556-1567. PDF

2013

• Chennu, S., Finoia, P., Kamau, E., Monti, M. M., Allanson, J., Pickard, J. D., Owen, A. M. & Bekinschtein, T. 2013. Dissociable Endogenous and Exogenous Attention in Disorders of Consciousness. NeuroImage: Clinical, 3, 450-461. PDF

  In the research leading up to this article, we used EEG to show that a vegetative patient was able to flexibly direct selective attention to words.
  

• Chennu, S., Alsufyani, A., Filetti, M., Owen, A. & Bowman, H. 2013. The cost of space independence in P300-BCI spellers. Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation, 10(1), 82. PDF

• Chennu, S., Noreika, V., Gueorguiev, D., Blenkmann, A., Kochen, S., Ibáñez, A., Owen, A. M. & Bekinschtein, T. A. 2013. Expectation and attention in hierarchical auditory prediction. The Journal of Neuroscience, 33(27), 11194-11205. PDF

• Cruse, D., Chennu, S., Chatelle, C., Bekinschtein, T. A., Fernández-Espejo, D., Pickard, J. D., Laureys, S. & Owen, A. M. 2013. Reanalysis of "Bedside detection of awareness in the vegetative state: a cohort study" - Authors' reply. The Lancet, 381(9863), 291-292. PDF

2012

• Cruse, D., Chennu, S., Fernández-Espejo, D., Payne, W., L., Young, G., Bryan & Owen, A., M. 2012. Detecting awareness in the vegetative state: Electroencephalographic evidence for attempted movements to command. PLoS ONE, 7(11), e49933. PDF

• Chatelle*, C., Chennu*, S., Noirhomme, Q., Cruse, D., Owen, A. M. & Laureys, S. 2012. Brain–computer interfacing in disorders of consciousness. Brain Injury, 1-13. PDF

• Chennu, S. & Bekinschtein, T. A. 2012. Arousal modulates auditory attention and awareness: insights from sleep, sedation and disorders of consciousness. Frontiers in Psychology, 3(00065). PDF

• Cruse*, D., Chennu*, S., Chatelle, C., Fernández-Espejo, D., Bekinschtein, T. A., Pickard, J. D., Laureys, S. & Owen, A. M. 2012. The relationship between aetiology and covert cognition in the minimally-conscious state. Neurology, 78(11), 816-822. PDF

• Cruse, D., Chennu, S., Chatelle, C., Bekinschtein, T. A., Fernández-Espejo, D., Pickard, J. D., Laureys, S. & Owen, A. M. 2012. Bedside detection of awareness in the vegetative state? Authors' reply. The Lancet, 379(9827), 1702. PDF

2011

• Cruse, D., Chennu, S., Chatelle, C., Bekinschtein, T. A., Fernández-Espejo, D., Pickard, J. D., Laureys, S. & Owen, A. M. 2011. Bedside detection of awareness in the vegetative state: a cohort study. The Lancet, 378(9809), 2088-2094. PDF

  The research described in this article used EEG to show that some patients in the vegetative state might possess some form of covert awareness. More info available on Dr. Damian Cruse's website.

• Chennu, S., Bowman, H. & Wyble, B. Fortunate Conjunctions Revived: Feature Binding with the 2f-ST² Model. In: Carlson, L., Hölscher, C. & Shipley, T., eds. Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, 2011. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society, 2598-2603. PDF

2009

• Chennu, S., Craston, P., Wyble, B. & Bowman, H. 2009. Attention Increases the Temporal Precision of Conscious Perception: Verifying the Neural-ST2 Model. PLoS Computational Biology, 5(11), e1000576. PDF

• Craston, P., Wyble, B., Chennu, S. & Bowman, H. 2009. The attentional blink reveals serial working memory encoding: Evidence from virtual & human event-related potentials. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 21(3), 550-566. PDF

• Chennu, S., Craston, P., Wyble, B. & Bowman, H. The influence of target discriminability on the time course of attentional selection. In: Taatgen, N. A. & Van Rijn, H., eds. Proceedings of the 31st Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, 2009. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society, 1506-1511. PDF

• Bowman, H., Craston, P., Chennu, S. & Wyble, B. The delayed consolidation hypothesis of all-or-none conscious perception during the attentional blink, applying the ST² framework. In: Taatgen, N. A. & Van Rijn, H., eds. Proceedings of the 31st Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, 2009. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society, 2152-2157. PDF

2008

• Bowman, H., Wyble, B., Chennu, S. & Craston, P. 2008. A Reciprocal Relationship Between Bottom-up Trace Strength and the Attentional Blink Bottleneck: Relating the LC-NE and ST2 Models. Brain Research, 1202, 25-42. PDF

• Chennu, S., Craston, P., Wyble, B. & Bowman, H. Transient Attentional Enhancement during the Attentional Blink: ERP correlates of the ST² models. In: French, R. M. & Thomas, E., eds. FROM ASSOCIATIONS TO RULES: Connectionist Models of Behavior and Cognition, 2008. 5 Toh Tuck Link, SINGAPORE 596224: World Scientific, 236. PDF

* Joint first author

Media Coverage

January 2016: Our PLOS Computational Biology article about brain connectivity during transition to unconsciousness during propofol sedation was covered by science media, including the BBC and the Daily Mail:

October 2015: My commentary on the remarkable recovery of Clodagh Dunlop from a locked-in state after a stroke.

October 2014: Our PLOS Computational Biology article characterising resting state brain networks in disorders of consciousness received extensive public and media interest, including from:

Wired Magazine	BBC News	New Scientist	The Independent
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung	The Times of India	The Telegraph of India	Scientific American

May 2014: My commentary on recent advances in the neuroimaging of consciousness, featured on Inside Science on BBC Radio 4.

November 2013: In the research leading up to our Neuroimage: Clinical article, we used EEG to show that a vegetative patient was able to flexibly direct selective attention to words. This was covered by many news stories, including:

BBC News	The Washington Post	Der Spiegel	The Verge

June 2012: My Radio Wiltshire commentary on the remarkable case of Mr. Tony Nicklinson and his right-to-die appeal.

April 2012: My comments on Mr. Steven Thorpe's amazing recovery after seemingly irreversible brain damage, and the challenges of incontrovertibly detecting brain death with EEG.

November 2011: The research described in our Lancet article used EEG to show that some patients in the vegetative state might possess some form of covert awareness. Here is some of TV and radio coverage that it received. More on Dr. Damian Cruse's website.

Collaborations

• Dr. Tristan Bekinschtein, University of Cambridge

• Prof. Richard Henson, MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit

• Prof. Adrian Owen and Dr. Damian Cruse, University of Western Ontario

• Prof. David Menon, Division of Anaesthesia, University of Cambridge

• Prof. Howard Bowman, University of Kent

Miscellaneous

• Scott and the Machine - blog post about my research visit to the University of Western Ontario in summer 2012, supported by the UK Foreign Office Science and Innovation Network.

• mffimport - An EEGLAB plugin I wrote to import EGI's Metafile Format (MFF) EEG data files into EEGLAB.

• An abstract of my doctoral research, and a PDF of PhD thesis on the 'temporal spotlight of attention'

• Demonstrations of the binding problem and some quirky cognitive phenomena

• My assistant editor homepage on Scholarpedia, the peer-reviewed, open-access encyclopedia