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Sanz Perl Y, Pallavicini C, Pérez Ipiña I, Demertzi A, Bonhomme V, Martial C, Panda R, Annen J, Ibañez A, Kringelbach M, Deco G, Laufs H, Sitt J, Laureys S, Tagliazucchi E. Perturbations in dynamical models of whole-brain activity dissociate between the level and stability of consciousness. PLoS Comput Biol 2021; 17:e1009139. [PMID: 34314430 PMCID: PMC8315553 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009139] [Citation(s) in RCA: 18] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/22/2020] [Accepted: 06/01/2021] [Indexed: 01/07/2023] Open
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 conscious wakefulness. Our work leads to a novel methodological framework to sort out different brain states by their stability and reversibility, and illustrates its usefulness to dissociate between physiological (sleep), pathological (brain-injured patients), and pharmacologically-induced (anesthesia) loss of consciousness.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yonatan Sanz Perl
- Department of Physics, University of Buenos Aires, Intendente Güiraldes 2160—Ciudad Universitaria—Buenos Aires, Argentina
- National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), CABA, Buenos Aires, Argentina
- Cognitive Neuroscience Center (CNC), Universidad de San Andrés, Buenos Aires, Argentina
- Center for Brain and Cognition, Computational Neuroscience Group, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain
- * E-mail: (YSP); (ET)
| | - Carla Pallavicini
- Department of Physics, University of Buenos Aires, Intendente Güiraldes 2160—Ciudad Universitaria—Buenos Aires, Argentina
- National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), CABA, Buenos Aires, Argentina
- Fundación para la Lucha contra las Enfermedades Neurológicas de la Infancia (FLENI), Buenos Aires, Argentina
| | - Ignacio Pérez Ipiña
- Department of Physics, University of Buenos Aires, Intendente Güiraldes 2160—Ciudad Universitaria—Buenos Aires, Argentina
- Fundación para la Lucha contra las Enfermedades Neurológicas de la Infancia (FLENI), Buenos Aires, Argentina
| | - Athena Demertzi
- Physiology of Cognition Research Lab, GIGA-Consciousness, GIGA Institute, University of Liège, Liège, Belgium
| | - Vincent Bonhomme
- Anesthesia and Intensive Care Laboratory, GIGA-Consciousness, GIGA Institute, University of Liège, Liège, Belgium
- University Department of Anesthesia and Intensive Care Medicine, Centre Hospitalier Régional de la Citadelle (CHR Citadelle), Liège, Belgium
- Department of Anesthesia and Intensive Care Medicine, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Liège (CHU Liège), Liège, Belgium
| | - Charlotte Martial
- Coma Science Group, GIGA Consciousness, University of Liège, Liège, Belgium
- Centre du Cerveau², Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Liège (CHU Liège), Liège, Belgium
| | - Rajanikant Panda
- Coma Science Group, GIGA Consciousness, University of Liège, Liège, Belgium
- Centre du Cerveau², Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Liège (CHU Liège), Liège, Belgium
| | - Jitka Annen
- Coma Science Group, GIGA Consciousness, University of Liège, Liège, Belgium
- Centre du Cerveau², Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Liège (CHU Liège), Liège, Belgium
| | - Agustin Ibañez
- National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), CABA, Buenos Aires, Argentina
- Cognitive Neuroscience Center (CNC), Universidad de San Andrés, Buenos Aires, Argentina
- Latin American Brain Health Institute (BrainLat), Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Santiago, Chile
- Global Brain Health Institute (GBHI), University of California-San Francisco (UCSF), San Francisco, California, United States and Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
| | - Morten Kringelbach
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
- Center for Music in the Brain, Department of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus University, Århus, Denmark
- Life and Health Sciences Research Institute (ICVS), School of Medicine, University of Minho, Braga, Portugal
- Centre for Eudaimonia and Human Flourishing, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
| | - Gustavo Deco
- Center for Brain and Cognition, Computational Neuroscience Group, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain
- Department of Information and Communication Technologies, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain
- Institució Catalana de la Recerca i Estudis Avançats (ICREA), Barcelona, Spain
- Department of Neuropsychology, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany
- School of Psychological Sciences, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
| | - Helmut Laufs
- Department of Neurology and Brain Imaging Center, Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
- Department of Neurology, Christian Albrechts University, Kiel, Germany
| | - Jacobo Sitt
- Institut du Cerveau et de la Moelle épinière, ICM, Paris, France
- Inserm U 1127, Paris, France
- CNRS UMR 7225, Paris, France
| | - Steven Laureys
- Coma Science Group, GIGA Consciousness, University of Liège, Liège, Belgium
- Centre du Cerveau², Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Liège (CHU Liège), Liège, Belgium
| | - Enzo Tagliazucchi
- Department of Physics, University of Buenos Aires, Intendente Güiraldes 2160—Ciudad Universitaria—Buenos Aires, Argentina
- National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), CABA, Buenos Aires, Argentina
- Latin American Brain Health Institute (BrainLat), Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Santiago, Chile
- Department of Neurology, Christian Albrechts University, Kiel, Germany
- * E-mail: (YSP); (ET)
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