Abstract: Typical neurological examinations focus on qualitative and subjective assessments, including obtaining a patient history, assessing the patient's cognitive status, motor and sensory skills, and cranial nerve functionality. A quantitative assessment of neurological condition includes recording a subject performing a visuomotor task and processing the performance data to determine a level of complexity in the task activity and determine a complexity index. For a sample healthy population, a baseline level of complexity and baseline complexity index can be determined. A patient's complexity index can be compared to this baseline complexity index as an indication of disease or disability. A baseline complexity index can be determined for a patient at part of a health maintenance examination and used as the baseline complexity to detect disease or disability in the future based on lower complexity index values in future examinations.

Abstract: Major depression can affect multiple physiologic systems. Analysis of signals that reflect integrated function may be useful in probing dynamical changes in this syndrome. Complex variability can be used as a marker of healthy, adaptive control mechanisms and dynamical complexity decreases with aging and disease. The heart rate (HR) dynamics in non-medicated, young to middle-aged males during an acute major depressive episode exhibit lower complexity compared with healthy counterparts. By analyzing HR time series, a neuroautonomically regulated signal, during sleep, using the multiscale entropy method, a measure of complexity of HR dynamics can be determined. The complexity of the HR dynamics is significantly lower for depressed than for non-depressed subjects for the entire night and combined sleep stages 1 and 2, providing an indication of depression.

Abstract: Provided herein are methods and systems for assessing cellular flickering. The methods include using a phase contrast microscope to obtain a plurality of images of a cell, digitizing and/or pixilating the plurality of images such that the plurality of images are segmented into an array of pixels, each pixel representing a portion of the cell, and measuring the fluctuations in the pixel intensities. The methods further include calculating a complexity measure for the individual pixels based on the measured fluctuations of the portions of the cell represented by the individual pixels. Such complexity measures can then be mapped and/or plotted in order to assess cellular flickering, and thereby assess biological function and other characteristics of the cell.