Emergence of consciousness and complexity amidst diffuse delta rhythms: the paradox of Angelman syndrome

Summary

Children with Angelman syndrome, who are fully conscious, have brainwave patterns that look like those seen during unconsciousness, challenging theories that link consciousness to complex neural activity. However, when comparing wakefulness to sleep, the brainwaves of 35 children with Angelman syndrome show greater complexity during wakefulness, even when accounting for slow-wave activity. This supports the idea that consciousness is tied to neural complexity and warns against assuming a lack of consciousness based solely on EEG readings.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Numerous theories link consciousness to informationally rich, complex neural dynamics. This idea is challenged by the observation that children with Angelman syndrome (AS), while fully conscious, display a hypersynchronous electroencephalogram (EEG) phenotype typical of information-poor dynamics associated with unconsciousness. If informational complexity theories are correct, then sufficiently complex dynamics must still exist during wakefulness and exceed that observed in sleep despite pathological delta (1 – 4 Hz) rhythms in children with AS. As characterized by multiscale metrics, EEGs from 35 children with AS feature significantly greater complexity during wakefulness compared with sleep, even when comparing the most pathological segments of wakeful EEG to the segments of sleep EEG least likely to contain conscious experiences, and when factoring out delta power differences across states. These findings support theories linking consciousness with complexity and warn against reverse inferring an absence of consciousness solely on the basis of clinical readings of EEG.