Thinkpad

In all remaining patients, and in accordance with GMA guidelines (6 (link), 14 ), an EEG (Deltamed itmed^® machine with Neurofile^® software on a Lenovo ThinkPad^® laptop computer, 23 steel-needle electrodes, 10–20 placement, electrode impedance 1–5 kΩ, high pass filter 70 Hz, low pass filter 0.53–0.16 Hz/time constant 0.3–1 s, amplification 2 μV/mm, repeated application of painful stimuli to the face and extremities, auditory and visual stimuli, additional double distance montage) was recorded after clinical assessment by one of the two examiners for > 30 min to confirm irreversibility of the condition. Short-acting muscle relaxants (e.g. rocuronium i.v.) were applied in patients with residual scalp EMG activity. Recording of a flatline EEG (i.e., electrocerebral inactivity) over more than 30 min is required to confirm ILBF. EEG was chosen as the reference standard for the following reasons: (i) EEG is a bedside test, (ii) EEG does not require transport of instable patients to diagnostic facilities, (iii) EEG is applicable in most ILBF candidates since there are no restrictions related to age or lesion pattern/mechanism according to GMA regulations.

Participants completed two tasks, a time representation task and a delay discounting task, and five surveys. Surveys were completed in the following order for all participants: event evaluation, demographic, self-continuity, task rationale, and state-trait anxiety inventory (STAI). Experiment order for the time representation and delay discounting tasks was counterbalanced in each study sample. All materials were developed in English and translated to Mandarin by two bilingual researchers at South China Normal University (for translated task instructions, see Supplementary Table S4). English speakers completed the tasks on a Windows Lenovo ThinkPad (15.5in), and Mandarin speakers on either an Acer Aspire e15 (15.6in), Acer V193W (19in), or Acer G195WVAb (19in).

The experiment was carried out in a dark and quiet environment. All aspects of the experiment were controlled by a Lenovo ThinkPad computer running MATLAB and the Psychophysics Toolbox (Brainard, 1997 (link); Pelli, 1997 (link)). The visual stimuli were created in Matlab using the Psych toolbox; stimuli were displayed on a Lenovo laptop with a 14-inch monitor (1366 × 768 pixels; refreshment rate, 48 Hz) and were viewed at a distance of 75 cm from the screen, yielding a viewing angle of 1.5°for the stimuli. During the experiment we asked the participants to keep their heads fixed so as not to affect the distance from the computer screen. The stimulus was a composite image consisting of red concentric circles and green radial gratings (Figure 1).