Communications biology
January 28, 2023
Andrea I Luppi, Jakub Vohryzek, Morten L Kringelbach et al.
98 citations
Consciousness depends on how tightly brain function follows the brain's physical wiring. Using MRI scans, researchers measured structure-function coupling across spatial scales in people who were unconscious from anesthesia or brain injury and in people under psychedelics (LSD or ketamine). During loss of consciousness, function more closely tracked the brain's structural connections, a signature that could distinguish behaviorally similar brain-injured patients and detect covert consciousness. In contrast, psychedelics decoupled function from structure, and this decoupling correlated with physiological and subjective scores. The findings suggest that connectome harmonic decomposition reveals how neuromodulation and network architecture jointly shape consciousness.
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
August 10, 2020
Andrea I. Luppi, Jakub Vohryzek, Morten L. Kringelbach et al.
26 citations
preprint
Consciousness arises from how the brain's structural wiring shapes its dynamic activity. By decomposing resting-state fMRI data into harmonic modes of the human structural connectome, a generalizable signature of lost consciousness emerges—whether from anesthesia or brain injury—while a reversed signature characterizes psychedelic states induced by LSD or ketamine, reflecting decoupling of function from structure. This connectome harmonic approach discriminates between behaviorally indistinguishable brain-injured patients and tracks covert consciousness, linking neurobiology to conscious experience.
bioRxiv Preprint Server
April 12, 2021
Peter Coppola, Lennart R.b. Spindler, Andrea I. Luppi et al.
preprint
The diversity of brain dynamics within small-world network topology, measured as sample entropy (dSW-E), consistently predicts levels of awareness across sedation and disorders of consciousness, even after accounting for underlying functional connectivity dynamics. Both subcortical and cortical areas show predictive value, but subcortical regions exhibit higher and more robust effect sizes. The dynamic reorganization of the functional information architecture, especially in the subcortex, emerges with awareness and offers explanatory power beyond the complexity of dynamic functional connectivity alone.