Fig. 3: Phrenic nerve changes the cerebral vessel tonus in deeply sedated mechanically ventilated patients.

fNIRS differences between pace and unpaced sessions: Dot plots show the results of the linear analysis where statistically significant differences between the sessions for functional near-infrared system data were observed. The yellow and blue colors represent unpaced (MV, mechanical ventilation) and paced (MV + PNS, mechanical ventilation plus phrenic nerve stimulation) sessions respectively and the red colour represents data from Patient #1 who had an out-of-the-hospital cardiac arrest and was diagnosed with acute hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (a possible negative control). On the bottom right, a brain topoplot displays the anatomical brain regions where a statistically significant change was observed between paced vs. unpaced sessions. The red color in the topoplot indicates statistical significance defined as p < 0.05. The gradient of colors from yellow to dark blue indicates p-values greater than 0.05. (Source data file in Supplementary Data 3).