Consciousness related neural events viewed as brain state space transitions

Werner, Gerhard

doi:10.1007/s11571-008-9040-6

Cited by 27 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 175 publications

(128 reference statements)

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“…Another fundamental postulate is that consciousness occurs in the brain in the dynamic regime of self-organized criticality (Werner, 2009a) often indicated by power–law relationships (Bak and Paczuski, 1995; Beggs and Plenz, 2003) although not without critique (Beggs and Timme, 2012). However, power–laws of neuronal population events are also present in anesthetized animals and in vitro preparations (Massobrio et al, 2015) and systematic assessment their state-dependence has been scarce (Ribeiro et al, 2010).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…During spontaneous ongoing activity, neuronal population firing is closely correlated with the negative phase of the LFP, mainly due to synchronous dendritic depolarization of the population at a time scale that corresponds to the integration time of neurons – approximately 10 ms (Gabernet et al, 2005). The negative phases of LFPs (nLFPs) form spatiotemporal patterns whose size distribution follows scale-free (power–law) distribution (Beggs and Plenz, 2003), suggesting the presence of self-organized criticality (Werner, 2009a). The diversity of nLFP patterns serves as a measure of the brain’s state repertoire that may, in turn, correlate with the state of consciousness.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Repertoire of mesoscopic cortical activity is not reduced during anesthesia

et al. 2016

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Consciousness has been linked to the repertoire of brain states at various spatiotemporal scales. Anesthesia is thought to modify consciousness by altering information integration in cortical and thalamocortical circuits. At a mesoscopic scale, neuronal populations in the cortex form synchronized ensembles whose characteristics are presumably state-dependent but this has not been rigorously tested. In this study, spontaneous neuronal activity was recorded with 64-contact microelectrode arrays in primary visual cortex of chronically instrumented, unrestrained rats under stepwise decreasing levels of desflurane anesthesia (8%, 6%, 4%, and 2% inhaled concentrations) and wakefulness (0% concentration). Negative phases of the local field potentials formed compact, spatially contiguous activity patterns (CAPs) that were not due to chance. The number of CAPs was 120% higher in wakefulness and deep anesthesia associated with burst-suppression than at intermediate levels of consciousness. The frequency distribution of CAP sizes followed a power–law with slope −1.5 in relatively deep anesthesia (8–6%) but deviated from that at the lighter levels. Temporal variance and entropy of CAP sizes were lowest in wakefulness (76% and 24% lower at 0% than at 8% desflurane, respectively) but changed little during recovery of consciousness. CAPs categorized by K-means clustering were conserved at all anesthesia levels and wakefulness, although their proportion changed in a state-dependent manner. These observations yield new knowledge about the dynamic landscape of ongoing population activity in sensory cortex at graded levels of anesthesia. The repertoire of population activity and self-organized criticality at the mesoscopic scale do not appear to contribute to anesthetic suppression of consciousness, which may instead depend on large-scale effects, more subtle dynamic properties, or changes outside of primary sensory cortex.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Repertoire of mesoscopic cortical activity is not reduced during anesthesia

et al. 2016

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“…In the insightful moment when subjects perceive Mooney faces, neural synchronization spreads all over the brain, which lasts for about 100 ms (Rodriguez et al 1999). Such synchronization is thought to be related to some of the Gestalt rules and feature binding (Singer 2009) or a mechanism for transient functional neurocognitive connectivity (Werner 2009). In general, when ''Mooney'' objects (i.e., bi-level quantized images of various objects) and their original grayscale photographs are presented alternately, activities of inferior temporal and parietal regions are enhanced (Dolan et al 1997).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Visual one-shot learning as an ‘anti-camouflage device’: a novel morphing paradigm

Ishikawa

Masamune

2011

Cogn Neurodyn

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Once people perceive what is in the hidden figure such as Dallenbach's cow and Dalmatian, they seldom seem to come back to the previous state when they were ignorant of the answer. This special type of learning process can be accomplished in a short time, with the effect of learning lasting for a long time (visual one-shot learning). Although it is an intriguing cognitive phenomenon, the lack of the control of difficulty of stimuli presented has been a problem in research. Here we propose a novel paradigm to create new hidden figures systematically by using a morphing technique. Through gradual changes from a blurred and binarized two-tone image to a blurred grayscale image of the original photograph including objects in a natural scene, spontaneous one-shot learning can occur at a certain stage of morphing when a sufficient amount of information is restored to the degraded image. A negative correlation between confidence levels and reaction times is observed, giving support to the fluency theory of one-shot learning. The correlation between confidence ratings and correct recognition rates indicates that participants had an accurate introspective ability (metacognition).The learning effect could be tested later by verifying whether or not the target object was recognized quicker in the second exposure. The present method opens a way for a systematic production of ''good'' hidden figures, which can be used to demystify the nature of visual one-shot learning.

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“…It has been shown that dynamical patterns of these correlations are shaped by a complex interplay between underlying anatomical connections and ongoing activity of the interacting regions . Thus, allowing for long-distance co-activity of functionally segregated brain areas and forming the basis of cognitive functions (Werner 2009). However, the exact mechanisms contributing to the longrange cortical interactions still remain largely unknown.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Role of structural inhomogeneities in resting-state brain dynamics

Vuksanovic

Hövel

2016

Cogn Neurodyn

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Brain imaging methods allow a non-invasive assessment of both structural and functional connectivity. However, the mechanism of how functional connectivity arises in a structured network of interacting neural populations is as yet poorly understood. Here we use a modeling approach to explore the way in which functional correlations arise from underlying structural connections taking into account inhomogeneities in the interactions between the brain regions of interest. The local dynamics of a neural population is assumed to be of phase-oscillator type. The considered structural connectivity patterns describe longrange anatomical connections between interacting neural elements. We find a dependence of the simulated functional connectivity patterns on the parameters governing the dynamics. We calculate graph-theoretic measures of the functional network topology obtained from numerical simulations. The effect of structural inhomogeneities in the coupling term on the observed network state is quantified by examining the relation between simulated and empirical functional connectivity. Importantly, we show that simulated and empirical functional connectivity agree for a narrow range of coupling strengths. We conclude that identification of functional connectivity during rest requires an analysis of the network dynamics.

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Consciousness related neural events viewed as brain state space transitions

Cited by 27 publications

References 175 publications

Repertoire of mesoscopic cortical activity is not reduced during anesthesia

Repertoire of mesoscopic cortical activity is not reduced during anesthesia

Visual one-shot learning as an ‘anti-camouflage device’: a novel morphing paradigm

Role of structural inhomogeneities in resting-state brain dynamics

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