Percolation Model of Sensory Transmission and Loss of Consciousness Under General Anesthesia.

ABSTRACT: Neurons communicate with each other dynamically; how such communications lead to consciousness remains unclear. Here, we present a theoretical model to understand the dynamic nature of sensory activity and information integration in a hierarchical network, in which edges are stochastically defined by a single parameter p representing the percolation probability of information transmission. We validate the model by comparing the transmitted and original signal distributions, and we show that a basic version of this model can reproduce key spectral features clinically observed in electroencephalographic recordings of transitions from conscious to unconscious brain activities during general anesthesia. As p decreases, a steep divergence of the transmitted signal from the original was observed

SUBMITTER: Zhou DW 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4656020 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature