Sleep Neuroimaging and Models of Consciousness
Frontiers in Psychology January 1, 2013 Enzo Tagliazucchi, Marion Behrens, Helmut Laufs 42 citations
Deep sleep, marked by reduced sensory activity and loss of conscious awareness, offers a natural setting for testing theories of consciousness. This review examines recent fMRI studies of spontaneous brain activity during sleep, linking findings to the global workspace theory, information integration theory, and the dynamical core hypothesis. The authors highlight a shift from studying evoked responses to resting-state activity and emphasize the need for dynamic analysis of functional interactions over time. They also stress the importance of experimentally verifying reduced or absent conscious content during the deepest sleep stages.