Perturbations in dynamical models of whole-brain activity dissociate between the level and stability of consciousness.

ABSTRACT: Consciousness transiently fades away during deep sleep, more stably under anesthesia, and sometimes permanently due to brain injury. The development of an index to quantify the level of consciousness across these different states is regarded as a key problem both in basic and clinical neuroscience. We argue that this problem is ill-defined since such an index would not exhaust all the relevant information about a given state of consciousness. While the level of consciousness can be taken to describe the actual brain state, a complete characterization should also include its potential behavior against external perturbations. We developed and analyzed whole-brain computational models to show that the stability of conscious states provides information complementary to their similarity to cons

SUBMITTER: Sanz Perl Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8315553 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature